Vito Giallorenzo has been the head of communications service provider BlackBerry’s IVY Innovation Fund since it was set up in March 2021. The fund targets startups useful to data-driven automotive ecosystem providers, and it is part of the BlackBerry IVY intelligent vehicle data platform, which was unveiled at the end of 2020.
BlackBerry IVY is part of a multi-year, global agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The Innovation Fund aims to provide portfolio companies with cash and access to BlackBerry’s customers, as well as access to up to $100,000 in AWS credits.
At the fund’s launch, Giallorenzo said: “The BlackBerry IVY Innovation Fund will be a powerful tool to enable both established and startup partners to benefit from BlackBerry IVY’s powerful data insights and help us drive advancements across the entire transportation industry.”
Talking to Global Corporate Venturing in 2021, he added: “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.
“Any application that uses data from a vehicle is a potential candidate for our portfolio. 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.”
Since being set up, the IVY Innovation Fund has invested in Car IQ, a payment service for fleet vehicles, and mobility analytics specialist Electra Vehicles.
Giallorenzo joined BlackBerry in 2017 following a nine-year stint as managing director for technology investment banking at Perella Weinberg Partners, an investment bank.
He has a double master’s degree in engineering from the University of Illinois in Chicago and the Politecnico di Milano in Milan, as well as an MBA from Insead.
