Taiwan-based UMC Capital, the corporate venture arm of leading semiconductor foundry United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), has invested in Trilliant, a US-based provider energy efficiency management systems.
UMC Capital joins corporate venturing peers from industrial groups ABB and General Electric as well as financial investors Investor Growth Capital and VantagePoint Venture Partners in Trilliant’s latest round.
Trilliant said it was opening a corporate office for the Asia Pacific market as UMC would help.
DC Cheng, president of UMC Capital, said: "Utilities are looking to leverage advanced communications technologies to build out their smart grid infrastructure and Trilliant offers a very compelling solution that, unlike their major competitors, is based on internationally available spectrum. Uniquely, this makes Trilliant’s solution immediately deployable into the Asia Pacific market today."
In July, ABB invested $20m in Trilliant through its ABB Technology Ventures corporate venturing unit set up the previous October.
Investor and ABB had previously provided €300m ($388m) each to their short-lived €1bn B-Business Partners corporate venturing fund started in March 2000 to invest in e-commerce companies, with other investors in the fund representing some of the world’s biggest companies in AstraZeneca, Atlas Copco, Electrolux, Saab, Sandvik, StoraEnso and WM-data.