On April 26th, Saint-Gobain announced its investment in the Richland Capital’s VC Fund III, for the purpose of strengthening cooperation with China and jointly growing high performance materials business in China.
Richland Capital is a leading investment firm for emerging technology in China, focusing on investment in advanced materials, high-end manufacturing equipment, and digital technology. Saint-Gobain Group, along with other international companies and leading domestic institutional investors，has jointly invested in the Richland’s Venture Capital Fund III.
Saint-Gobain is a Fortune 500 French multinational company with a long history of more than 350 years. Founded in 1665, Saint-Gobain provided advanced materials for many iconic constructions such as the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles, the Louvre Pyramid and more recently for the National Grand Theater in Beijing and the Shanghai Grand Theater, the China Zun tower in Beijing and the Hong-Kong-Macao-Zhuhai Bridge. Besides the construction market, Saint-Gobain also designs, manufactures and distributes high performance materials and innovative solutions for construction, mobility and health-care markets and for other industrial applications.
With 8 R&D centers across the globe including one located in China, 4,000 researchers and more than 400 patents every year, Saint-Gobain has been ranked among the World’s Top 100 Most Innovative companies by Clarivate for the past 10 years.
Currently based in 70 countries, Saint-Gobain counts more than 167,000 employees. In Asia-Pacific, Saint-Gobain covers 14 countries with more than 80 production sites.
“This investment constitutes for Saint-Gobain a robust platform of close observation and potential collaboration of / with high-technology driven start-ups in China in those fields that are connected, directly or indirectly, with our main solutions and markets. In this way, the Saint-Gobain business model, whose main pillar is innovation, gets invigorated in China whose own new economic model is also built around the notion of technology and innovation,” commented Javier Gimeno, Senior Vice President of Saint-Gobain Group and CEO of Asia-Pacific.
Minas Apelian, Vice President of Internal and External Ventures at Saint-Gobain Group, said that “Our partnership with the team at Richland helps us learn about development of high-tech startups within China that are aligned with the long term strategy of our global businesses and creates a platform that can enable partnerships with startups based in China.”
It was said by Cheng Yong, founding partner of Richland Capital that “Saint-Gobain is one of the world's top materials companies and market leader in multiple fields including ceramics, automobile glasses, abrasives, grinding tools, and reinforced fibers, etc. Richland Capital is very honored to have Saint-Gobain participate in Richland’s Venture Capital Fund III, working together to boost the materials innovation in China. Even before the fund investment, many Richland Capital’s portfolio companies have already started technical and business cooperation with Saint-Gobain. I believe that this kind of collaboration will be carried out at a faster speed and on a larger scale in the future.”
About Saint-Gobain
Saint-Gobain designs, manufactures and distributes materials and solutions for the construction, mobility, healthcare and other industrial application markets. Developed through a continuous innovation process, they can be found everywhere in our living places and daily life, providing wellbeing, performance and safety, while addressing the challenges of sustainable construction, resource efficiency and the fight against climate change.
This strategy of responsible growth is guided by the Saint-Gobain purpose, “MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER HOME”, which responds to the shared ambition of all the women and men in the Group to act every day to make the world a more beautiful and sustainable place to live in.
€38.1 billion in sales in 2020
More than 167,000 employees, located in 70 countries
Committed to achieving Carbon Neutrality by 2050
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About Richland Capital
Founded in 2011, Richland Capital is a first-line investment institution in industrial technology in China. With new materials as its main direction, it focuses not only on high-end equipment and digital technology, etc., but also on pan-semiconductors, new energy vehicles, 5G, digital manufacturing, and other application markets. Since its establishment, Richland Capital has adhered to the strategy to drive investment with industry research and is good at discovering leading enterprises and hidden champions in the field of segmentation. The vision of Richland Capital is to build the main bridge between the scientific and technological innovations and commercial successes in China. So far, Richland Capital has invested in many science and technology projects, such as Exciton Technology (300566), Rianlon (300596), Jalon Micro-Nano (688357), Dioo Microcircuits, Launch Design, Favored Tech, and Runtai Chemical.
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