Playground Global is an incubator, accelerator, and venture capital firm founded in 2014. The firm was established by Andy Rubin, Bruce Leak, Matt Hershenson, and Peter Barrett. It is based in Palo Alto, California.
As of March 2019, the firm has 29 companies and its portfolio and has sold off its shares in five companies. In December 2018 for RightHand Robotics, a company developing robotics solution for supply chain purposes.
Playground Global specializes in funding companies that are building software-based hardware. Playground Global focuses on investing on companies in the early stage of development. Since 2016, the firm has raised a fund total of $540 million across two funding rounds. Its latest round was held in January 2017, amassing $40 million.
Playground Global's investments include Relativity Space, Next Silicon, Robust.AI, Strand Therapeutics, Owl Labs, Ayar Labs, RapidSOS, Virta, Agility Robotics, Algolux, Anjuna, Artificial, Blockfolio, Branch Metrics, uAvionix, Devialet, Essential Products, SUBPAC and Fathom Computing.
They have exited investments in eero, DeepScale, Canvas Technology, Nervana and MileZero.
Timeline
Funded Companies
A technology company that has created a platform which connects emergency responders with essential data. It was founded in 2012 and is located in New York City.
A company developing process of building and flying rockets.
An electronics and Internet company that has created mesh networking equipment for home Wi-Fi. It was founded in 2015 and is located in San Francisco, California.
Skydio is a developer of autonomous drone robotics.
PsiQuantum is a company building a general-purpose silicon photonic quantum computer.
Branch Metrics is a deep linking and business analytics platform offering developer tools for large and independent mobile application companies.
Nauto is a Palo Alto, California-based company that develops fleet safety management hardware founded by Stefan Heck.
Lighthouse AI is a Palo Alto, California-based consumer electronics company.
Based on 10-years of research and collaboration between MIT, UC Berkeley, and CU Boulder, and funding from DARPA via the POEM program, Ayar Labs created a solution that overcomes the power/performance scaling challenges of semiconductors as well as the interconnect bandwidth bottleneck between those devices.
Intel Nervana was a subsidiary of Intel developing processors for artificial intelligence systems.
RightHand Robotics is a company founded by Yaro Tenzer, Lael Odhner and Leif Jentoft.
Company developing a protein barcoding platform to employ powerful multiplexed measurement.
Sparta Science is a Menlo Park, California-based company.
Virtahealth is a San Francisco-based healthcare company founded by Sami Inkinen.
Strand Therapeutics is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotechnology company.
CANVAS Technology is a Boulder, Colorado-based company.
Associated investment funds
People
Adam Newman
Head of Infrastructure Operations
Alistair Inglis
Conceptual Designer
Andy Rubin
Founder/Managing Director
Anh Nguyen
Design Principal
Bruce Leak
Founder
Matt Hershenson
Founder
Peter Barrett
Founder
Further reading
Documentaries, videos and podcasts
Companies
Agility Robotics
Ayar Labs
Fathom Computing
MileZero
RightHand Robotics
Virta