Japan-based Trend Micro, a global leader in cybersecurity solutions, has set up a corporate venture fund with an initial investment of $100 million for exploring emerging technology markets.

This venture fund will allow Trend Micro to nurture a portfolio of startups that are incubating ideas and living at the epicenter of hyper growth markets, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), said a statement from the company.

According to Gartner estimates, 26 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020.

Eva Chen, founder and chief executive officer for Trend Micro, said: "Our vision has always been to make the world safe for exchanging digital information. The explosion of devices is transforming how the world works, thinks and acts."

"It is clear that the ecosystem is still evolving and there is work to do to ensure organisations and individuals can operate and live safely in this new reality," she added.

Trend Micro’s venture will offer companies financial backing, access to its world-class global threat intelligence, strategic alliances, as well as its channel of more than 28,000 partners, it said.

In return, working with these investments will uncover insights into emerging ecosystem opportunities, disruptive business models, market gaps and skillset shortages. These learnings will influence Trend Micro’s cybersecurity solution planning across the company, it added.
 
With a strong financial position and 72 quarters of consecutive profitability, Trend Micro is well positioned to invest funds to do research and make advancements consistent with its corporate strategy, said a statement.

The formation of this venture arm allows additional freedom to dive into new areas without disrupting core business resources, it said.

"We have a 29-year history of successfully anticipating technology trends to secure all types of environments," remarked Chen.

“The first mega wave we caught was the growth of the PC marketplace; we committed early on to endpoint protection and remain a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms today,” she said.

“The second mega wave was all about the cloud; we made a bet early on to securing the cloud and so far we have secured over two billion workload hours on Amazon Web Services (AWS) alone. Now, we believe the next wave has arrived with IoT; our fund will help us harness this opportunity,” she added.-TradeArabia News Service