Lab360 Hardware Incubator

Chinese cybersecurity firm Qihoo 360 supported the establishment of Lab360 as a US-based innovation center focused on hardware. Joseph Wei co-founded the incubator to give early-stage hardware startups a physical presence in Silicon Valley with prototyping resources, while leveraging the manufacturing relationships and capital networks Qihoo 360 brought. The firm operates independently as a seed-stage investor and incubator, not as a corporate venture arm.

Co-founder Joseph Wei, Managing Director of Technology Ventures Group, leads investment decisions alongside Partner Michael Liao. Liao also runs Heuristic Capital, a separate venture firm that frequently co-invests with Lab360, creating overlapping decision-making on shared portfolio positions. Wei's leadership roles within IEEE inform technical diligence on hardware-stage companies.

Lab360 combines seed-stage direct investment with incubator-style resources — electronics labs, 3D printing bays, and mechanical design workstations — under one roof in Santa Clara. The firm writes checks at the pre-seed and seed stages, typically alongside co-investors such as Wistron Corporation and Heuristic Capital. Portfolio companies receive both capital and access to prototyping-to-production transition support.

Lab360 focuses on early-stage hardware companies, typically entering at pre-seed or seed rounds when the founding team has a working prototype but has not yet reached volume manufacturing. The firm does not participate in growth-stage or late-stage rounds. Its incubation model is designed to compress the time and cost of moving from functional prototype to first production run.

Deal flow originates through Joseph Wei's IEEE network — which spans hardware engineers, standards bodies, and academic labs globally — and through the co-investment pipeline shared with Michael Liao's Heuristic Capital. The cross-border structure surfaces startups in both Silicon Valley and Asia, with particular strength in robotics, IoT, and industrial automation categories where IEEE-connected founders are concentrated.

Lab360 routinely co-invests alongside Wistron Corporation, the Taiwan-based manufacturing giant, and Heuristic Capital, Michael Liao's venture firm. The firm is open to syndicated seed rounds and frequently serves as the hardware-domain specialist within broader investment groups. Co-investments are structured as direct equity rather than fund commitments.

Lab360 does not invest in software-only startups, consumer apps, or enterprise SaaS without a physical-hardware component. The firm's Santa Clara prototyping labs and supply-chain relationships are purpose-built for tangible products, making pure-software deals incompatible with the incubator model. Life sciences and biotech hardware also appear absent from known portfolio activity.