Dell Ventures has launched a new venture fund worth $300 to increase the company's ability to innovate and develop a new range of products and services. With the expanded venture fund, Dell seeks to make headway into other areas including next generation data center technology, big data, mobile computing, security and cloud computing.
Dell Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden said, "Dell is committed to bringing the most innovative, affordable and easy to manage technology solutions" to its customers.
"To accomplish this, we will aggressively pursue organic investment in R&D, acquisitions, and venture investing," Gladded said. "The expansion of our venture investing will allow us to stat at the forefront of innovation for our customers, and support the entrepreneurs who are helping shape the future of IT."
In light of the Dell's newly announced global sales deal with the online data storage company Dropbox, the new innovation fund shows the company's commitment to strengthening its presence in data storage. Last year, Dell also invested $60 million in a fund labeled as the Fluid Data Storage fund to leverage on new start ups developing data center technologies.
Dell Ventures has been around for a while now but has largely been inactive since the early part of the last decade. However, Dell's venture arm has been revived in recent years injecting millions of dollars in capital to over a dozen companies. According to the Managing Director of Dell Ventures, Jim Lussier, "As a company rooted in entrepreneurial spirit, Dell understands the power of entrepreneurship has on innovation."
"Since we have launched our storage venture capital fund last year, we have not only had positive returns on our investments and great deal flow, we have also identified companies and technologies that will help accelerate IT innovation, and more importantly, provide the best solutions for our customers. This substantial increase in our Dell Ventures fund and expansion of our technology focus beyond storage, will bring the power of Dell to even more start-ups and entrepreneurs." Lussier adds.
The new venture fund, called Strategic Innovation Venture Fund, will be part of Dell's general strategy to create the next generation of relevant technologies and other technology solutions.
