LG Technology Ventures is the venture capital investment arm of the LG Group.

LG Technology Ventures was established in 2018 and its team consists of experienced investors, entrepreneurs, technologists, and industry domain experts. Currently, LG Technology Ventures is managing over $400 million of fund assets and invests in early-stage start-ups in artificial intelligence, mobility, advanced materials, life-sciences, next generation display, mobile, and 5G. We strive to create value to our portfolio companies by helping them develop strategic partnerships with various LG Companies.

$142 Billion Sales

71 Subsidiaries

222,000+ Workforce

100+ Global Operations

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Investment Team

Dong-Su Kim, Ph.D.

CEO

Dong-Su Kim is the CEO of LG Technology Ventures. He has over twenty-five years of investment, strategy, planning, and technology experience. As the founding CEO, Dong-Su established the fund structure, hired key people, and initiated investment operations. Under his guidance, LG Technology Ventures manages over $400 million of fund assets and invests in early-stage information technology, automotive, manufacturing, life-sciences, energy, and advanced materials companies. Portfolio companies include AmazeVR, Lygos, May Mobility, and Ridecell.

Previously, Dong-Su was Vice President and GM of Samsung Ventures America where he managed offices in Menlo Park, Boston, London, and Tel Aviv. He has led the investment of over thirty companies in diverse sectors including semiconductors (Soft Machines, Verisilicon, Wave Computing), equipment (DCG Systems, IMS, Reno Subsystems), materials (Nanosys, NexPlanar, Voltaix), and storage systems (Pure Storage).

Prior to joining Samsung Ventures, he was a Director at Asia Evolution, an investment bank in Korea covering mid-market financing, private placement, and M&As.

Before that, he was a Director at the Technology Strategy Office of Samsung Electronics. As the CTO’s staff, he was responsible for strategic venture investments and technology alliances. He also worked in technology planning for Samsung’s Telecom R&D center, responsible for discovering new research topics. Dong-Su started his professional career as a Technical Leader at Samsung Fiber Optics Business Unit in development of fiber optic components.

His past Board Director appointments include Datera, Digital Specialty Chemicals, Femtometrix, Inpria, Reno Subsystems, SBA Materials, SVXR, D2S, DCG Systems (acquired by FEI), NexPlanar (acquired by Cabot), Voltaix (acquired by Air Liquide), Panasas, and Pixtronix (acquired by Qualcomm). Dong-Su also served on the Investment Advisory Committee for Sierra Ventures.

Dong-Su has earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University, and a B.S. with Honors in Applied Physics from California Institute of Technology

Anshul Agarwal

Investment Director

Anshul Agarwal has over twenty years of experience as an entrepreneur, operator, and investor in Information Technology and Deep Tech companies.

Anshul started his career as a software engineer at Epic System Corp, which he helped transform into the dominant company in the Healthcare IT space. At Epic, he conceived and launched multiple products while rotating between technical and business roles. After stints in the hedge fund and management consulting worlds, he gravitated to venture capital because of his passion for technology. Prior to joining LG Technology Ventures, Anshul was at Mitsui Investments where he invested in the areas of AI, Mobility, IoT, Data Analytics, Robotics, and Energy.

Anshul holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and a degree in Computer & Management Information Systems from the University of Arizona.

PORTFOLIO

May Mobility

Michael Falcon

Investment Director

Michael Falcon has over twenty years of venture capital and operating experience, with an emphasis on Deep Tech and information technology industry sectors. Prior to LG Technology Ventures, Michael was a Managing Partner of Bandgap Ventures, which focuses on physical science technology investing in the areas of advanced materials, manufacturing, and electronics. Michael began his work in venture capital at Alara Capital (formerly Guggenheim Venture Partners), which was the venture capital group of Guggenheim Partners, a global financial services firm with more than $200 billion in assets under management.

Michael has held senior positions in operating companies including Director of Marketing and Business Development at Molecular Imprints, a venture-backed semiconductor equipment company that was acquired by Canon. Michael also served as a Captain at the US Air Force Research Laboratory, where he led a multi-million dollar semiconductor laser research and development program at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. Michael has also worked at Texas Instruments and Teradyne Corporation and has authored multiple technical publications.

Michael has four degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, an M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he was a Leaders for Global Operations Fellow and a recipient of the Patrick G. McGovern Award for Entrepreneurship.

Michael lives with his wife and teenage daughter and enjoys playing golf and exercising.

Robert McIntyre

Investment Director

Mr. McIntyre has over twenty years of experience as an investor, entrepreneur, and advisor with technology start-up companies in Silicon Valley.

As an investor, Mr. McIntyre served as a Partner at CMEA Ventures ($1b AUM) and an associate at H.I.G. Capital ($30b AUM) where he led many successful investments including Intermolecular (IPO), Schooner (acquired by Sandisk), Ageia (acquired by Nvidia), Visyx (acquired by Measurement Specialties), Lvl7 Systems (acquired by Broadcom), and Mojo Networks (acquired by Arista Networks).

As an entrepreneur, Mr. McIntyre has served as a business development executive at several start-up companies including NextBio (acquired by Illumina), TeselaGen Biotechnology, and AirWave Wireless (acquired by Hewlett-Packard).

Mr. McIntyre holds a B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an MBA from the Wharton School, where he was a Palmer Scholar.

PORTFOLIO

Ridecell
Lygos
Optodot
SideChef

Taejoon Park

Investment Director

As an experienced venture capitalist, Taejoon is passionate about deep technologies, such as artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, next generation displays, AR/VR, semiconductor, and cleantech.

Prior to joining LG Technology Ventures in 2018, Taejoon spent the previous seven years at Applied Ventures, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, a leading semiconductor equipment company. As a senior member of the investment team, Taejoon was responsible for investments in semiconductor, semiconductor equipment, process technologies, advanced materials, and cleantech. Taejoon led and managed investment in DMO Systems, Digital Specialty Chemicals (acquired by Entegris), Inpria, MTPV Power Corporation, BT Imaging, Voltaix (acquired by Air Liquide), and Enki Technology (acquired by First Solar).

Prior to Applied Ventures, Taejoon was a senior consultant at Monitor Group’s Seoul office, where he performed diverse aspects of strategy projects for large Korean conglomerates in the electronics, chemicals, automotive, oil & gas, cleantech, and mobile sectors.

Taejoon holds his B.S. in electrical engineering from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea and an MBA from the Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley.

Taejoon enjoys hiking and wine tasting. Most important to Taejoon, however, are his wife, Ji Yeon, and his two cats, Cosette and Marius.

PORTFOLIO

AmazeVR
Spatial

Business Development Team

Younjei Han

Vice President

Younjei has over twenty years of strategy planning and new business development experience in the field of IT and the telecommunication industry, working as a strategist and consultant. As the leader of a year-long taskforce project to establish LG Technology Ventures, Younjei led the establishing of its legal structure, fund formation, organization structure, and investment approaches of LG Technology Ventures.

Prior to joining LG Technology Ventures, Younjei spent fifteen years at LG Uplus, a telecommunication affiliate of LG in Korea. As Vice President and General Manager of the strategy department, he led the team of fifty on market intelligence, competitive analysis, and strategy planning. Younjei was also engaged in introducing new LTE mobile services.

Previously, Younjei was a strategy consultant at Advance Business Link and Eon Group, local strategy consulting firms in Korea, for three years. He performed diverse strategy projects in the telecommunication, cosmetics, healthcare, and steel industry. Younjei began his career as an entrepreneur and co-founded InnoMarket, a start-up developing e-business software and providing consulting services. As the head of strategy and finance, he successfully raised capital from financial VCs and managed its overall operation for three years.

Younjei has an MBA from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Younjei enjoys golf, movies, and good beer. While he lives in the Bay Area, what he misses most from Korea is his wife, daughter, and two lovely dogs.

Troy S. Chun, Ph.D.

Senior Director

Prior to joining LG Technology Ventures, Sangki spent fifteen years at LG Chem. Sangki specializes in surface science and analytical methodology. His accomplishments in LG Chem include developing and commercializing antistatic pressure sensitive adhesive for optical films such as polarizer and protection film, and printed metal mesh film for large area touch sensors.

Sangki holds his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Texas Tech University (2002), and his M.S. and B.S. from Seoul National University. Sangki is an author of eighteen scientific articles and over fifty patents.

Sangki enjoys mountain biking, swimming, and traveling over the weekend.

Changyeon Kim, Ph.D.

Senior Director

Changyeon has over twenty years of experience in the display sector. Prior to joining LG Technology Ventures, Changyeon worked at LG Display for twenty-two years where he was a senior manager responsible for exploring cutting-edge display technologies and building strategic relationship with technology joint development partners. He also led the OLED TV task force and proposed OLED TVs as a new product of LG Display to LG Corp.

Changyeon began his career as an engineer designing display panels and engineering its driving circuit where he gained comprehensive knowledge and practical experience of the LCD and OLED display industry.

Changyeon has a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from Seoul National University in Korea, and an M.S. and a B.S. in Electronic Engineering from Sogang University.

Changyeon lives with his wife and two daughters in the Silicon Valley and enjoys playing table tennis and listening to CCM.

Gyun Hong Kim

Senior Director

Gyunhong has over twenty years of experience in the field of IT services as an engineer, consultant, strategist, and collaboration coordinator.

Prior to joining LG Technology Ventures, Gyunhong spent nineteen years at LG CNS, a global IT service company of LG Group. Gyunhong began his career as a system engineer and performed over eighty IT projects on site covering various industries including public, manufacturing, defense, financial, education, and retail. Afterwards, Gyunhong transitioned his career towards consulting, evaluating new technologies, building corporate technology strategies, and leading new business development.

Gyunhong was also dedicated to developing the next generation smartphone with LG Electronics, serving as one of the team leaders. Gyunhong also served as an auditor of the Hackathon challenge hosted by the city of Seoul and as an advisor of the Korean National Information Society Agency for several years. He was awarded the Bronze degree from LG Group's Future Challenger program, which is a contest held by LG Group for new business models and technology development. He has also received a plaque for his contribution to the new IT systems from The Korean Police Agency and Shinhan Bank in Korea.

Gyunhong holds his B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Hanyang University and his MBA from LG Academy, where he won the Best Project Award as a team leader and graduated summa cum laude.

Gyunhong began his new journey in the Bay Area in August 2018 with his wife and two teenagers. He enjoys playing golf, taking photographs, and taking road trips.

Dong Ho Lee

Director

Before joining LG Technology Ventures, Dong Ho worked in various roles at LG Electronics for fourteen years. Dong Ho primarily worked on setting up in-house R&D strategies and exploring partnership opportunities that could enhance LGE’s business portfolio and enable new business opportunities. In one of his roles, Dong Ho spent over five years at LGE’s investment team where he co-managed the $10M US fund and launched a couple of new funds with Korean VC partners. He also spent three years at the New Business Center as a project leader to initiate, incubate, and launch new products, such as home beer brewing machines and beauty devices, alongside LGE’s business units.

Dong Ho began his career as an antenna designer in 2005, focusing on the design and development of antenna systems for small handheld devices. As a co-leader of several antenna programs, Dong Ho successfully deployed a new antenna technology to LGE’s mobile phones which has hit over 10M sales across the globe.

Dong Ho holds an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Arizona and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Hongik University, South Korea. He also was a visiting scholar at the MIT Media Lab in 2014 where he performed research on sensor fusion location-based services and next generation multimodal input devices.

Finance / Operation

Gyehyon Andrea Jo

CFO, Vice President

Andrea is the CFO of LG Technology Ventures. He has over seventeen years of financial planning, treasury, and investment experiences including M&A. As the founding CFO, Andrea led the creation of the fund structure and operation processes under portfolio risk management.

Andrea had been a part of LG since 2002, providing business planning and management direction. He evaluated long-term investment opportunities that could be built upon teamwork and collaboration. He worked for the business planning team, finance, and treasury team in LG Electronics. Andrea also performed due diligence and post-merger integration for the M&A of ZKW Group, a global automotive lighting company based in Austria. Before that, he was the leader of financials of the business turnaround task force at the LG Business Audit Team. Andrea also successfully managed global cashflow throughout the global financial crisis of 2008 and established the cashflow management system in ERP. In addition, he was the FX dealer for risk management and successfully overcame the credit crisis in 2010. As a result, Andrea improved the fund risk management process and established preventive management which was implemented at other LG affiliates. He also successfully restructured loans to achieve stability by managing overseas credit lines and issuing long-term corporate bonds for liquidity management.

Andrea has an M.A. in M&A and MBA. Andrea emphasizes adopting the LG Way and LG’s code of ethics as fundamental steps in implementing corporate venture capital.

Sungmin Kim

Fund Accountant

Sungmin has over nine years of experience in accounting, covering a variety of areas.

Sungmin started her career as an intern at CDNetworks HQ in Korea, a global content delivery network service company, and ended up working as an accountant for them for over six years. At CDNetworks, she conducted tax audits, due diligence audits by new shareholders, and implementation of the ERP systems for two foreign subsidiaries in Singapore and UK. She also supported the foreign subsidiaries regarding accounting matters such as auditing, book closing, and improvement of the accounting systems. Sungmin took an opportunity to work for the US subsidiary which brought her to the Bay Area where she worked as a senior accountant for the previous three years prior to joining LG Technology Ventures.

Sungmin holds a B.S. in Business Administration from Korea University. She and her husband enjoy hiking and going on camping trips all over California. They both love nature and outdoors.

Christine Lim

Administrative Assistant

Prior to joining LG Technology Ventures, Christine worked at LG San Jose Lab as an Administrative Assistant. She contributed to the efficient operation of the office by supporting the team, including the CEO and CFO. Through her hard work, Christine gained more exposure to financial and treasury-related tasks, such as monitoring the company’s expense transactions and managing internal and external wire transfers. This valuable experience led Christine to join the LG Technology Ventures team, where she serves as a Treasury Assistant.

Christine holds a B.S. in Film, and has five years of experience as an assistant film producer and an editor.

Christine enjoys cooking, watching movies, and traveling when she has free time.

David Kang

Administrative Assistant

Although David was born in Indiana, he spent half of his life in Korea and moved back to Southern California when he was in high school. David has been a long-time follower of tech companies and is beyond excited to work at LG Technology Ventures and contribute to making an impact in the technology world.

David’s prior experience includes working as a sales and operations assistant, where he was recognized as a valuable team member for his contributions in various tasks. He has additional experience in other technology fields such as web development. David learned multiple programming languages, such as Ruby, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript and SQL, through coding bootcamps at Telegraph Academy and Launch Academy. He enjoys identifying and resolving issues through critical thinking while programming.

David holds his B.S. in managerial economics from University of California, Davis. In his spare time, David enjoys reading blogs by software engineers on advancements made by tech companies or playing tennis.

Ashley Namkung

Staff

Ashley arrived at LG Technology Ventures with a range of experiences. The highlights of the past two years come from the time she has spent volunteering in afterschool programs and church. She dedicated a large amount of time and energy into making these programs succeed and thrive. She has also spent time as a stock associate, receptionist, and purchasing coordinator.

Ashley graduated from Biola University with a B.A. in Communication Studies and has a Certificate of Achievement in Web Page Development from De Anza College.

Ashley enjoys dancing, exercising, and traveling when there’s time to spare.

Meet the companies we've teamed up with and the amazing work we're doing together.

All

Consumer

Enterprise

Device/Materials

Life Sciences

AmazeVR

AmazeVR is the leading VR video distribution platform for premium content, providing proprietary VR creation tools that allow creators to produce high-quality VR content with ease and without engineers.

Investor / Team

www.amaze.us

Lygos

Lygos has created a full-stack biological engineering platform focused on organic acid specialty chemicals and bio-monomers. Lygos’ sustainable, bio-based chemicals replace expensive, environmentally degrading alternatives and enable customers to create better, safer products with value-added performance.

Investor / Team

www.lygos.com

May Mobility

May Mobility is the only enterprise autonomous transportation company providing daily transit to the American public, currently serving public and private customers in major metros.

Investor / Team

www.maymobility.com

Optodot

Developing advanced coatings and separators for lithium batteries, Optodot Corporation is an intellectual property, specialty products, and contract services company. Optodot’s technology and IP, with more than 60 issued and pending patents, will enable next-generation lithium batteries to operate with greater safety, higher energy density, and lower cost than current products.

Investor / Team

Dong-Su Kim, Ph.D.

www.optodot.com

Ridecell

Ridecell provides a complete solution to launch and manage profitable mobility services—including carsharing and ridesharing—and is the only platform that scales from driven to driverless services. Ridecell is the trusted partner of leading mobility brands world-wide, including OEMs, fleet owners, ridesharing operators and others in the $100+ billion MaaS market.

Investor / Team

Taejoon Park

Dong Ho Lee

www.ridecell.com

SideChef

SideChef is an award-winning home cooking platform bringing together on-demand groceries, guided interactive recipes from Michelin Star chefs to food bloggers, and the smart kitchen, for a seamless cooking journey.

Investor / Team

Dong-Su Kim, Ph.D.

Younjei Han

www.sidechef.com