AAA Johnson Controls starts venturing

Johnson Controls starts venturing

Johnson Controls, a US-based industrials conglomerate, has made its first commitment to a venture capital fund as the start of its formal corporate venturing programme.

Data and news provider Dow Jones said Johnson Controls had invested in Nth Power’s planned $200m fund. Nth Power has had a long history of working with corporate venturing units, with one of its managing directors, Bryant Tong, being the former executive president of Pacific Venture Capital, part of US utility PG&E.  A Johnson Controls spokesman confimed it had invested in Nth Power.

Dow Jones’s VentureWire news provider said Johnson Controls was already working with Nth Power portfolio company FirstFuel Software to remotely audit a building’s energy use as well as Optimum Energy, a software provider for cooling skyscrapers. Johnson Controls has also taken a $5m stake in US-listed Azure Dynamics, which develops parts for electric vehicles, VentureWire added.

Johnson Controls, which has annual revenues of $40bn across its three divisions of buildings efficiency, power and automotives, is reaching out to clean-tech start-ups. Domenic Armano, director of building efficiency at Johnson Controls, said each of the three business units now had someone looking at start-ups and VC firms but there was no central control point for them yet. However, he added the three units spent time with each other to pass over leads.

Armano said it had decided to formalize its outreach strategy to entrepreneurs because it had always previously only been done in a fragmented way before. He said: "We are looking for innovation we can leverage for our customers. Success is finding products or services we can use or introduce to customers."

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