The funds, Square Peg Fund 4 and Opportunities Fund 2, will back tech startups across Australia, Southeast Asia and Israel.

Square Peg, an Australian VC firm, announced its raise of $550 million, a so-called “fifth generation” of funds, for the Square Peg Fund 4 and Opportunities Fund 2. The firm has now received capital commitments in excess of $1.6 billion since it launched a decade ago. The size and timing of the raise is noteworthy given the global macroeconomic situation and the meltdown in technology valuations. (Square Peg)

The funds will back startups in Australia, Southeast Asia and Israel. “Over the past decade, we have demonstrated that there are significant benefits to investing across multiple regions, which allows us to empower exceptional tech founders from a broader set of opportunities,” the company said in a statement. “The larger opportunity set also allows us to be highly thematic in our approach and obtain compounding benefits from our domain expertise.”

The Square Peg Fund 4 is the firm’s core venture fund that invests in early stage companies from Seed to Series B. The Opportunities Fund 2 invests in later stage rounds of promising startups (“emerging winners”), once the firm has utilised available venture funds. According to a Bloomberg report, the firm will allocate $350 million of the total to Fund 4 and $200 million to Opportunities Fund 2.

Sectors of choice include software-as-a-service, consumer internet, fintech, education tech, health tech and future of work technologies.

Square Peg has already commenced investing the latest round monies.

“We have already made a handful of exciting new and follow-on investments out of our new funds, including welcoming Kula and Supabase to the Square Peg family, and continuing to back the team at Airwallex, one of Australia’s highest valued private tech companies,” it said.

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