Christina Riboldi, programme director of GCV, interviewed Vito Giallorenzo, senior vice president of corporate development and chief operating officer for the internet of things (IoT) at Canada-based tech firm BlackBerry.
Giallorenzo explained to the audience that BlackBerry is “very well and alive”, now as a profitable software-only company after a transformation involving a shutdown of its device business. He also told the audience about a joint project with Amazon’s cloud division AWS which tackles issues in automotive software and aims to foster an ecosystem of apps in automotive IT. “It is very important to attract solutions and build an ecosystem. You need that for the platform to work and be adopted. Amazon has done it in the past with the Alexa Fund,” said Giallorenzo.
He also shed light on BlackBerry’s strategic fund, which is based in California, was launched in April this year and has already closed a deal in a seed round. The fund engages in direct investments only and is stage-agnostic: “We have just completed a seed round recently, looking at a couple of series B rounds…Any application that uses data from a vehicle is a potential candidate for our portfolio.” Giallorenzo also clarified: “Ours is a strategic fund but that is not to say that we want to lose money on it. We definitely want to make money.”