An heir to one of Asia’s biggest finance fortunes is building a firm for private credit bets with backing from his billionaire family, highlighting the rising influence of wealthy dynasties’ younger members.
Andre Koo Jr., a fifth-generation scion of the Taiwan dynasty behind Chailease Holding Co. and other companies, recently formed K8 Capital in New York as a hybrid private credit and venture capital firm after helping to manage part of the clan’s fortune, according to documents seen by Bloomberg.
K8 is now seeking to raise at least $50 million from investors for a debut fund that the 28-year-old Koo and his family are anchoring, the documents show. The firm will allocate as much as $5 million per transaction and largely focus on the U.S., where it will supply private credit to businesses of all sizes while also investing in early-stage technology companies.
Koo — whose family has a fortune of at least $6.3 billion across two branches, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — declined to comment.
Some of the world’s richest families are eschewing larger funds to make their own investments in private credit as banks curtail lending. It’s grown into one of Wall Street’s hottest trades in recent years, with the private credit industry now worth more than $1.5 trillion.
The Koo dynasty’s next generation is building on a business empire dating back to 1895 that has since become one of Asia’s most influential. The family initially made a fortune dealing in goods such as salt and sugar before expanding into real estate, industrials and finance, including stakes in CTBC Financial Holding Co. and KGI Financial Holding Co.
Koo’s father and namesake is honorary chairman of Taipei-based Chailease Holding, an asset-backed financing giant whose share price has climbed more than four-fold over the past two decades. Koo Jr.’s grandfather, Jeffrey Koo Sr., who died in 2012 at age 79, was dubbed Taiwan’s “father of the credit card” and served as an adviser to three of its presidents.
“My role in this family is really being able to modernize,” Koo Jr., a NYU Stern School of Business graduate like his father, said in a Private Wealth Institute video published in 2020 on his career plans. “The version of my approach is really not building in line with, but building on top of.”
Koo, who lives in New York, started K8 after working as managing director for a family office overseeing his wealth and that of direct relatives, according to the documents seen by Bloomberg. The firm’s first fund requires a minimum investment of $500,000, according to a regulatory filing last month.
With its plans for venture investments, K8 is helping to plug a financing slump for U.S. startups, partly sparked by Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse in 2022. Global startup funding last year was almost $314 billion, slightly more than in 2023 but still less than half the 2021 total, when record-low interest rates fueled venture bets, according to Crunchbase data.
The firm is targeting artificial intelligence and enterprise software startups and already has gains of at least 50% through short-term loans to U.S. companies, according to the documents.
