US-based cybersecurity company Symantec yesterday launched a corporate venturing subsidiary dubbed Symantec Ventures that will target opportunities in the cybersecurity sector.
The unit will provide funding but will also assist startups reduce expenses and accelerate their time to market. Symantec has not disclosed how much capital it is allocating to the division.
Startups will gain access to Symantec’s next-generation technology assets, expertise in artificial intelligence, go-to-market resources and the corporate’s threat intelligence network.
The decision follows the corporate’s investment in US-based enterprise mobile threat platform Appthority, which closed a $17m series B round in July 2016 with the support of Symantec’s subsidiary Blue Coat Systems.
Greg Clark, chief executive of Symantec, said: “We are launching Symantec Ventures to catalyse innovation in the cyber security space. Too often entrepreneurs spend valuable time and resources building endpoint chassis, network appliances or cloud infrastructure instead of focusing their efforts on their true value-add innovation.
“We can help startups by allowing them to build on our extensible Integrated Cyber Defense Platform. For example, a new algorithmic approach to anomaly detection can be built on top of our endpoint platform or run on top of our network and cloud security drive train.
“This strives to enable Symantec’s more than 385,000 enterprise customers – which includes many of the largest enterprises in the world – to tap into the rich ecosystem of ideas in the marketplace and allow entrepreneurs to dramatically reduce their time to market.”