Telstra establishes new investment fund

Australia's Telstra has established a new fund focused on early to late stage telecoms ecosystem investment investment opportunities in the US, Australia and Asia.

The new fund has been jointly established between Telstra's investment arm Telstra Ventures and private markets investment specialist HarbourVest.

The partnership has been designed to streamline investment opportunities in innovative technology companies while making use of Telstra and HarbourVest's networks of contacts.

Telstra Ventures invests in high-growth companies that are strategically aligned with the parent company. It invests in companies in the mobile, cloud, media, machine learning, security and other emerging sectors, with a focus on companies with between $1 million and $50 million in revenue.

To date, Telstra has invested in 50 companies including Box, VeloCloud, GitLab and Crowdstrike.

"Consistent with our Telstra2022 corporate strategy announced last week this initiative will enable us to continue to leverage the benefits of our successful Telstra Ventures activation while supporting future growth with a new source of capital,” Telstra CEO Andy Penn said.

He added that the company will also realize A$75 million ($54.9 million) from the initial HarbourVest investment.