Heonbae Sohn
Investment Director
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- Full Name
- Heonbae (Calix) Sohn
- Title
- Executive Vice President
- Firm
- Samsung Venture Investment / Samsung Ventures
- Firm Type
- Corporate Venture Capital
- Investment Stage
- Seed, early-stage VC, and later-stage VC; external investor databases show Samsung Ventures’ highest activity around Series A and Series B
- Check Size
- Firm-level estimates: $500K-$15M typical check size; $3M “sweet spot”
- Target Company Profile
- Breakthrough technology companies with potential strategic relevance to Samsung’s global businesses
- Sector Focus
- AI, robotics, device solutions, bio & health, energy, security & privacy, IT & enterprise, consumer & devices; investor databases also associate Sohn with ICT, software, mobile, hardware, semiconductor, AI, IoT, fintech, health care, games, and nanotechnology
- Geographic Focus
- Global, with Samsung Ventures offices/network in Korea, Silicon Valley, Boston, London, Tel Aviv, Beijing, Tokyo, Bangalore, and Shanghai
- Location
- Seoul-Incheon Metropolitan Area, South Korea
Background
Heonbae Sohn, who also uses the English name Calix Sohn, is an investor at Samsung Venture Investment, Samsung Group’s corporate venture capital arm. His LinkedIn profile lists him at Samsung Venture Investment in the Seoul-Incheon area, and Korean business press reported on December 3, 2024 that Sohn was promoted to vice president/executive vice president level at Samsung Venture Investment.
Samsung Ventures describes itself as a technology-driven CVC founded in 1999. The firm reports $2.8B in AUM, 1,188 companies invested, 75 funds formed, and 44 active funds, with a mandate to back companies developing technologies that can transform industries. Sohn’s role sits inside this global CVC platform rather than a standalone angel-investor practice, so the “Angel Investors” label in the stub data appears inconsistent with public sources.
Sohn’s LinkedIn education section lists The Catholic University of Korea, where he was a Ph.D. candidate from 2017 to 2020. Public people-data sources list him with roughly 23 years of experience, but his detailed earlier roles are not fully visible in public search results.
His own LinkedIn activity points to a global technology-investing role: he has recruited for colleagues to work with him on ICT-related investments, has referenced Samsung Ventures’ investment in Oxford Semantic Technologies, and has posted that he does not want to receive investment decks “without context or prior communication.”
Investment Thesis & Focus
- Samsung Ventures’ stated firm thesis is to support “bold technologies and visionary entrepreneurs” reshaping industries, with a focus on deep-tech innovation.
- The firm’s published focus areas are AI, robotics, device solutions, bio & health, energy, security & privacy, IT & enterprise, and consumer & devices.
- Sohn’s public LinkedIn recruiting posts indicate a focus on ICT and global investment, with interest in people with computer-science backgrounds.
- External investor profiles associate Sohn with a broad technology portfolio including AI, IT, IoT, mobile, software, manufacturing, semiconductor, hardware, fintech, blockchain, health care, wearables, AR/VR, games, SaaS, and nanotechnology.
- Stage appears broader than the stub’s “Seed Round”: Samsung Ventures is listed by external databases as investing from seed through later-stage VC, with Series A and Series B the most common firm-level stages.
- His own outreach preference is explicit: “I don't want to receive an investment deck without context or prior communication.”
Notable Investments
- Oxford Semantic Technologies: Oxford University spinout commercializing RDFox knowledge-graph and reasoning technology; Samsung Ventures led a June 2019 round of more than £3M, and Samsung Electronics acquired the company in July 2024.
- StoreDot: Extreme-fast-charging battery company; StoreDot says Samsung Ventures led its 2013 Series A and led an $18M 2015 round for EV battery development.
- SentinelOne: Autonomous endpoint and cloud cybersecurity platform; Samsung Venture Investment participated in its $120M Series D in June 2019.
- Corephotonics: Computational photography and multi-camera technology company; investor databases list Samsung Ventures as an investor, and Samsung acquired Corephotonics in January 2019.
- Ledger: Crypto hardware wallet and digital-asset security company; Ledger confirmed Samsung Ventures’ 2019 investment reported at about €2.6M / $2.9M.
- MOLOCO: Mobile ad-tech and machine-learning advertising company; Korean investment coverage lists Samsung Venture Investment among key investors when MOLOCO became a unicorn.
- SiFive: RISC-V semiconductor IP company; listed in Sohn-associated investor databases as a past investment.
- Dapper Labs: Blockchain and digital-ownership company behind consumer crypto products; listed in Sohn-associated investor databases as a past investment.
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