Richard Tapalaga
Director at Qualcomm Ventures
San Diego, California
Overview
Work Experience
Director
2008 - Current
Richard serves as a Director for Qualcomm Ventures and leads the firms global early-stage practice. His investment focus is around the augmented / virtual reality, internet-of-things (IoT), robotics, mobile gaming, and connected device ecosystems. Richard joined Qualcomm Ventures in 2008 and serves as a Board Observer for investments in AirSpace Technologies, Realwear, Magic Leap, the Void, Embee Mobile and Playdek. Richard is also a Board Member for San Diego based Brain Corp. He also lead the team’s investment in Owlchemy Labs (acquired by Google), HeyZap (acquired by RNTS Media), Livescribe (acquired by Anoto), Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase), Sotera Wireless and ThatGameCompany.
Director
2008
Qualcomm Ventures is the corporate venture arm of Qualcomm with 180+ active investments and many well known exits (Zoom, Fitbit, Waze, Ring, Xiaomi, Cloudflare, 99 and Cruise). QCV invests across all sectors (consumer, enterprise, hardware) and has 20+ investment professionals spread across US, China, UK, Israel, Brazil, and India.
Qualcomm Ventures is a global investor that assists entrepreneurs in creating revolutionary businesses.
Investor
2018
Airspace Technologies is a technology-enabled logistics service provider
Airspace Technologies is a technology-enabled provider of time critical logistics.
Raised $136,000,000.00 from Qualcomm Ventures, HarbourVest Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Prologis Ventures, DBL Partners, Titanium Ventures and Defy.vc.
Investor
2022
A Ground-Breaking XR Solution for Mental and Emotional Well-Being.
TRIPP is a digital psychedelic wellness platform that uses virtual and augmented reality focusing on mental health.
Raised $26,300,000.00 from Hartmann Capital.
Investor and Board Member
2012
Brain Corp develops core technology for the robotics industry.
Raised $193,000,000.00 from Tennant co.
Investor
2014
thatgamecompany designs and develops artistically crafted, broadly accessible video games that push the boundaries of interactive entertainment.
Thatgamecompany develops artistically crafted, broadly accessible interactive video games.
Raised $28,800,000.00 from Sequoia Capital, TPG and Alanda Capital Management.
Investor
2019
The leader in knowledge transfer and training platforms for the connected worker.
RealWear is the global leader in assisted reality head-mounted displays for frontline workers.
Raised $126,800,000.00 from Foundry Group, Columbia Ventures Corporation, Qualcomm Ventures, Kopin and Fortive.
Investor
2014
Magic Leap is a spatial computing platform that lets you see an interact with digital content in the world around you.
Magic Leap is a proprietary wearable technology that enables users to interact with digital devices in a completely visually cinematic way.
Raised $4,068,500,000.00 from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
Investor
2018
The VOID is a whole-body, fully immersive VR experience in location based entertainment.
THE VOID builds and operates virtual entertainment centers that primarily focus on exploring immersive virtual worlds and dimensions.
Raised $20,000,000.00 from Qualcomm Ventures, The Walt Disney Company, Fidelity and James Murdoch.
Investor and Advisor
2019
A container-based distributed computing platform that empowers organizations to maximize all compute resources—from desktop, to server, to cloud.
Kazuhm is an IT company that provides a workload processing platform to create a cloud-based enterprise-grade compute grid.
Investor
2013
Digital tabletop game developer.
Playdek is mobile tabletop games publisher and developer powered by the Mber network.
Raised $6,582,210.00 from Rho West, Deep Fork Capital, Jarl Mohn, Qualcomm Ventures, ff Venture Capital, Greycroft and Ridge Ventures.