TORONTO – Research In Motion, RBC and Thomson Reuters and several other private Canadian investors are uniting to form a $150-million venture capital fund, called the BlackBerry Partners Fund LP, that will invest in emerging mobile applications and services.
The fund will focus on applications and services for the BlackBerry platform and other mobile platforms, including mobile commerce (payments, advertising, retailing and banking), vertical and horizontal enterprise applications, communication, social networking, location-based services (navigation and mapping), media and entertainment, and lifestyle and personal productivity applications. It will consider all stages of development.
John Albright, managing partner of JLA Ventures, and Kevin Talbot, RBC vice-president and managing director of RBC Venture Partners, will be co-managing partners of the BlackBerry Partners Fund. The investments will fund both domestic and international mobile projects.
“It is gratifying to see world class Canadian companies and investors joining together to help fuel further innovation globally in the thriving mobile ecosystem,” said Research In Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie. “TheBlackBerry Partners Fund recognizes that mobile applications and services represent some of the hottest opportunities in the technology sector today and will seek to fund the best and brightest innovators from around the world.”
Devin Wenig, CEO of the Markets Division of Thomson Reuters, said his company was pleased to be a founding partner of the fund.
“The Thomson Reuters investment in the BlackBerry Partners Fund underscores our commitment to next generation mobile technologies that will provide our customers with the ability to readily access intelligence information and make business-critical decisions anywhere, anytime,” he added.
