Samsung Launching $150M NEXT Fund For Tech Startups

The South Korean tech giant took the opportunity to announce a150 million dollar fund for tech startups at the Consumer Electronics Show 2017 (CES 2017) organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) of the US.

The CTA, used to be known as the Consumer Electronics Association, is an organization governing standards and trade benchmarks for the American consumer electronics industry.

The reps for Samsung said the fund will focus on investing in the early stages of a startup (we are thinking it’s going to be seed funding then, with the possibility of retaining shares if the startup is successful). The official news the fund will start investing even at a pre-seed stage and stay on up to series B. The startups invested in will typically be those focusing on avant garde, emerging technologies.

What kind of emerging technologies, you ask? Samsung is mostly interested in virtual reality, artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT) and what was quoted to be “new frontier technologies.”

Up to now there are 10 startups in the portfolio. They are:

Converge Industries – software developers to make drone flying easy to use even for business purposes.

Dashbot – Voice controlled smart AI assistant for your car that will organize music, give directions etc.

Entry Point VR – creators of a web platform from which pre-recorded live-action footage, animations, and 360 livestreams can be viewed and shared from a simple URL on all major virtual reality hardware.

Filament – developers of ready-to-use wireless sensor networks for industrial customers.

Intezer – One of the more recent startups to get investment from Samsung NEXT. This Israeli startup got 2 million dollars in December, 2016. Intezer builds cybersecurity software to monitor all software running in an organization.

LiquidSky – provides cloud computing solutions for high performance gaming experience.

Otto Radio – personalized curator of podcasts, Otto Radio is another that announced investment from Samsung NEXT on 5th January, 2017. It also announced an integration with Uber in November, 2016.

2Sens – developers of real time video processing technology to create a virtual reality experience consumable on the smartphone.

SafeDK – An Israeli mobile software development kit (SDK) management platform.

Virtru – Cybersecurity solutions provider for email encryption (take note, Hillary)

This venture capital arm of Samsung, used to be come under the brand name “Samsung Global Innovation Centre.” It was this division that would keep an eye out for companies and technologies that could possible align with Samsung’s business goals. Now it’s Samsung NEXT.

Given the number of Israeli startups the fund is investing in, it may only seem the natural next step to set up office in Tel Aviv, also announced at CES. This is in addition to the NEXT offices already set up in Mountain View, California; New York and San Francisco in the US, and Korea.

All that seems to be missing is the office in Bangalore.