Telstra Ventures, the US-based venture capital firm spun out of telecommunications firm Telstra, is set to close a fund sized at up to $400m, general partner Steve Schmidt told Global Corporate Venturing today.
Schmidt said: “We are about to raise our Fund III, for about $350m to $400m, and we will close that soon, in the next few weeks.”
Formed within Australia-headquartered Telstra in 2011 before being spun out in 2018 with backing from private equity firm HarbourVest, Telstra Ventures targets cloud, data, cybersecurity, network and digital consumer and media technology.
The firm’s previous fund was closed in 2018 and reportedly sized at about $500m, with Telstra and HarbourVest reportedly each contributing $125m. That fund has been fully deployed and the forthcoming fund will include external institutional investors among its limited partners.
Check back later this week for a full interview with Steve Schmidt on Telstra Ventures’ journey from an internal corporate venture capital unit to an independent firm.
