US-based telecommunications firm AT&T announced yesterday that it plans to invest up to $200m to a corporate venturing fund that will collaborate with venture capital firm Coral Group.
AT&T provides a diverse telecom service that incorporates mobile, internet, television subscription and business services. It already operates a research and development division called AT&T Labs and launched a range of AT&T Foundry innovation centres in 2011 to interact with startups.
The unit will focus on investments in connected services and platforms that can run on Open Network Automation Platform, AT&T’s operating system for software-defined networks, which it also uses to manage its own cloud network.
AT&T will harness the expertise of Coral’s Communications Industry Platform to identify prospective portfolio companies, and to find additional companies to invest in the fund. The firm has not revealed a name for the fund or the identity of its founding team.
Although AT&T has not had a dedicated corporate venturing unit, it has participated in VC investing, having backed open networking technology developer SnapRoute and video programming platform Cheddar in the past year.
Andre Fuetsch, AT&T’s chief technology officer and president of AT&T Labs, said: “This investment is part of our push to address the needs of global service providers.
“We look forward to collaborating with Coral and other CIP members to find – and even create – startup companies to build disruptive technologies to solve these challenges.”