New venture capital firm formed to focus on investments in China

The new firm's office is located in Zhongguancun, Haidian District, Beijing.

Venture capital firms Greylock Partners and New Enterprise Associates will provide ongoing advisory and operational support to Northern Light. Greylock and NEA will also be limited partners in the firm's initial fund, which is expected to close in the next few weeks.

Greylock's Aneel Bhusri and NEA's Scott Sandell have joined Northern Light's advisory board.

In addition to Feng Deng and Yan Ke, the Northern Light team includes venture partner Datong Chen, who founded Spreadtrum Communications and Omnivision Technologies, and venture partner Victor Tsao, who was formerly founder and CEO of Linksys and a senior executive at Cisco Systems.

'Exceptional opportunities exist in China for those with the vision to leverage key growth here to scale beyond the China market,' said Feng Deng, general partner at Northern Light. 'NEA and Greylock are top-tier VC firms whose China strategies and hands-on philosophies are the perfect complement to our own approach. We look forward to their support and strategic insights.'

Aneel Bhusri, managing partner at Greylock, commented, 'Greylock has already invested in China directly, and in concert with Northern Light's team we have identified many other high quality opportunities. We are eager to work more fully together to help grow tomorrow's market-leading companies.'

Scott Sandell, general partner at NEA, added, 'China is an exciting market with a large pool of highly talented entrepreneurs, which is what attracted NEA to make its first investment in China more than three years ago. NEA has already invested almost $200m in Chinese start-ups, including two that have gone public in the US - SMIC (NYSE) and Actions Semiconductor (NASDAQ).'

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