Jim Kim
Founder & General Partner @ Formation 8
San Francisco, United States
Jim Kim is a Series B investor at Formation 8 in San Francisco focused on Biotechnology and SaaS. Jim Kim is the Founder and General Partner of Builders VC and Founder and General Partner of Formation 8.Jim Kim began his career with GE Structured Finance and subsequently moved to GE’s Energy Financial Services Division where he worked on project financing for renewable energy projects. As a founding partner of the Energy Technology Venturesgroup, Jim invested in A123Systems, China High Speed Transmission, Ocean Power Delivery, and several later-stage companies across diverse cleantech sectors. Jim then joined CMEA Capital as a senior partner in the Energy & Materials practice. There he collaborated with entrepreneurs from A123Systems, Foro Energy, and a number of university spinouts. Most recently, Jim Kim was a partner at Khosla Ventures, where he led seed investments in companies like Varentec, Arcanum, and Avogy, and later-stage investments in companies like Ciris Energy.Jim received undergraduate degrees in computer science, electrical engineering and political science from MIT, where he also founded an Internet infrastructure start-up at the height of the technology bubble. He holds an MBA and a master’s in quantitative methods from Columbia University.When he’s not spending his free time making wine or practicing hung gar kung fu, Jim teaches green energy and entrepreneurship as an adjunct professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management, and conducts research with a professor at the Columbia Earth Institute. Jim hopes to see the U.S. National Soccer team win the World Cup in his lifetime.
- Total investments:
- 18
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 44%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Jim Kim invests in
Stages Jim Kim invests in
Countries Jim Kim invests in
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
|---|---|---|
| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
| Socials |
Investment Focus
Industry
- Biotechnology 4 (22%)
- SaaS 2 (11%)
- Life Science 2 (11%)
- Manufacturing 2 (11%)
- Advanced Materials 2 (11%)
Stage
- Series B 7 (39%)
- Series A 4 (22%)
- Series C 3 (17%)
- Seed 1 (6%)
- Pre-Seed 1 (6%)
Country
- United States 9 (50%)
- Australia 1 (6%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| UbiQD is a cleantech materials company that manufactures low-hazard quantum dots (QDs) and nanocomposites. The company produces low-toxicity quantum dots (QDs) so inexpensively that they will become ubiquitous through various target applications including safety, design, solar energy, lighting, security, and personal care. It also provides theperfect conditions for reproducible nanomaterial production while the close proximity to Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratory allows for beneficial collaborations with leading scientists in the area. UbiQD was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Los Alamos, New Mexico. | $20M / Series B / Apr 22, 2025 | ||
| Breaking is a plastic degradation and synthetic biology company. | $10.5M / Seed / Apr 17, 2024 | ||
| Ascus Biosciences develops computational and genomics-based technology platform to discover and develop next-generation microbial products. The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in San Diego, California. | $46M / Series B / May 27, 2020 | ||
| Checkerspot is a materials innovation company. Advances in our understanding of biology, chemistry and materials science are converging with breakthroughs in data science and unleashing capabilities they once only imagined. Checkerspot's technology unlocks this potential, expands the palette of materials available to product designers andenables a more intentional way to design performance materials for specific applications. As a graduate of the Illumina Accelerator program, we are building a technology platform that enables the design – at a molecular level – of new materials. Through applications development, they prototype and iterate on specific product embodiments. By engaging directly with product users and partnering with socially responsible corporations, they design and bring to market superior products with better materials. | $36M / Series B / May 04, 2020 | ||
| Fieldwire is the field management platform construction pros count on to easily manage the job site.Construction companies of all sizes use Fieldwire to power clear communication on over 500,000 projects worldwide. With its easy-to-use mobile application, Fieldwire saves each user 1 hour every day by enabling more efficient information sharingonsite. Fieldwire’s key features include plan viewing, task management, issue tracking, reporting, and more — all accessible from one place. Fieldwire is venture-backed by top investors in the industry and is already transforming the way dispersed teams communicate and collaborate on projects. Fieldwire is the easiest way for construction companies to stay organized on the job site. | $33.5M / Series C / Sep 16, 2019 | ||
| Checkerspot is a materials innovation company. Advances in our understanding of biology, chemistry and materials science are converging with breakthroughs in data science and unleashing capabilities they once only imagined. Checkerspot's technology unlocks this potential, expands the palette of materials available to product designers andenables a more intentional way to design performance materials for specific applications. As a graduate of the Illumina Accelerator program, we are building a technology platform that enables the design – at a molecular level – of new materials. Through applications development, they prototype and iterate on specific product embodiments. By engaging directly with product users and partnering with socially responsible corporations, they design and bring to market superior products with better materials. | $13M / Series A / Apr 16, 2019 | ||
| Bolt is a materials company that invents and scales materials that put the planet on a path towards a better future. Biofabricated silk fibers MicrosilkTM - based on proteins found in nature, produced using Bolt Threads proprietary technology and revolutionary bioengineering concepts. Next-generation of performance fibers, fabrics and luxuryproducts that represent cutting-edge technology in science, while raising the bar for quality, performance, and design. | $123M / Series D / Nov 09, 2017 | ||
| Notable Labs is a personalized testing service for cancer patients that prioritizes combinations of FDA-approved treatments that can be immediately prescribed by a doctor without a clinical trial. | $14.8M / Series B / Sep 06, 2017 | ||
| Notable Labs is a personalized testing service for cancer patients that prioritizes combinations of FDA-approved treatments that can be immediately prescribed by a doctor without a clinical trial. | $14.8M / Series A / Sep 06, 2017 | ||
| Versive finds the threats that matter inside the noise that doesn’t.The Versive Security Engine is the critical missing piece in a company’s security portfolio: it identifies bad actors who’ve breached or accessed the network by automatically understanding core activities they can’t avoid and linking them into readily actionable maps of unfoldingadversary campaigns, before it’s too late.Regardless of whether your assets are on-premises, in the cloud, or both, VSE acts as your network’s last line of defense, detecting the most difficult, dangerous internal and external adversaries regardless of what new tools, tactics, or exploits they use. | $12.7M / Series C / Aug 22, 2017 | ||
| See all 18 investments → | |||
Co-Investors
About Formation 8
Formation 8 is a venture capital firm that provides financial and strategic capital to early growth smart enterprise and energy technology companies. They support entrepreneurs who seek to transform the most important global industries by solving hard problems with technology solutions. Partnership is in their DNA. Formation 8 value trustedrelationships with entrepreneurs, investors, and strategic partners through their global network.As a partner to young companies, Formation 8's goal is to create long-term, sustainable value through operational expertise and business development partnerships. Formation 8 leverage their deep and distributed networks to provide the market knowledge, deployment expertise, sales channels, and relationships needed to expand into and thrive in Asia. With local teams in Korea, China and Singapore, Formation 8 connect Silicon Valley start-ups to dynamic multinational corporations in these geographies.
Formation 8 Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Amit Mehta
Venture Partner
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Bon Woong Koo
Founder and GP
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Bon Woong Koo
Founder and GP
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Drew Oetting
Partner
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Haitao Zhang
Business Development Partner- China
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FAQ
What does Jim Kim invest in?
Jim Kim invests primarily in Biotechnology, SaaS and Life Science startups, most often at Series B and Series A stage. Most of the 18 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
How do I contact Jim Kim?
Public channels for Jim Kim include LinkedIn. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
When did Jim Kim last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Jim Kim closed in Apr 2025. Shizune tracks 18 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Oct 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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