GM Working With Company “500 Startups” To Identify New Companies To Invest In
In order to better identify companies operating in “new aspects of the automotive experience” and keep up with the changes occurring in the industry, GM is now working with the firm “500 Startups” to identify investment opportunities, according to recent reports.
The news follows GM’s $1 billion investment into the self-driving tech firm Cruise earlier in 2016, and also its substantial $500 million investment into the on-demand taxi service firm Lyft.
The idea is apparently to identify companies such as Cruise and Lyft earlier in their development, according to CTO Jon Lauckner. Notably, according to a GM spokesperson, these GM Ventures investments will not be seed investments but are “instead to be made at a later time at GM’s discretion” during Series A funding rounds, or at later points.
Tech Crunch provides more:
“The intent is to give those startups access to mentorship in addition to what they’ll typically find through 500 Startups through GM’s network.
GM will be seeking out 5 companies (though that is not a hard and fast number, Lauckner said) within each batch to make investments with 500 Startups. The firm is currently working through its 19th batch of companies, and a partnership like this could also help it further differentiate itself from other accelerators. In fact, 500 Startups recently entirely dropped the “accelerator” brand in an attempt to further differentiate itself. …
“Working with a firm like 500 Startups — which has seen hundreds of companies go through its program — can give GM access to a big pipeline of companies and the firm’s extended network to find new potential investments. 500 Startups works to find plenty of companies that are outside of domestic markets.”
Importantly, the new investments will apparently not all be restricted to automotive sectors. Investments into machine learning, infotainment, and other areas are possible as well.
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