American company Qualcomm is ready to invest millions in Russian startups

The world's largest smartphone chip maker Qualcomm is ready to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian technology companies, according to Kommersant.ru. Over the past nine years, Qualcomm has invested $ 6 B in venture capital projects and half of that amount in Atheros Communications, a developer of chipsets for wireless communications. According to the new strategy, approved by Qualcomm in the fall of 2011, the corporation will work four goals in Russia: helping to develop network operators, expand the internet ecosystem services, to saturate the market with affordable smartphones, as well as to invest in technology and science.

Anastasia Lauterbach, the senior vice president of the Company said in an interview with Russian media.

Qualcomm analyzed the Russian startups market in January this year, but no deal has been closed so far. We would love to find some kind of laboratory, a company we could just invest in, to work with and take its technology. I think, there are such opportunities in Russia in terms of software - Mrs. Lauterbach says. Qualcomm may invest hundreds of millions of dollars as a seed founding as well as in later stages of financing. She did not disclose the total investment in Russia, stating that Qualcomm has $ 21 B of cash.

American corporation Qualcomm (capitalization on the NASDAQ on Saturday - $ 104B) began working in 1997 in Russia as a manufacturer of equipment and phones for CDMA-800 networks. Later, Qualcomm sold its infrastructure business to Ericsson, and its phone business to the Kyocera Company, and then helped to develop a CDMA-operator Sky Link and MTS, the Qualcomm representative says.

Qualcomm is an active venture capitalist: it has about 30 companies in its portfolio in wireless technology, the representative of the corporation says. In addition to funding the venture capital department of Qualcomm gives startups access to developers, technology platforms and other parts of Qualcomm, as well as helping to establish contacts with operators, developers, and venture partners.

In addition, Qualcomm announced in December the launch of the $ 100 M fund for medicine wireless technologies financing. Over the past nine years, Qualcomm has spent $ 6 B to acquire companies and half of that amount was invested in Atheros Communications, a chipsets for wireless communications developer. Qualcomm annually reinvests about 20% of revenues in R & D, $ 16 B over nine years in total, the company representative says.

The largest manufacturer of computer chips Intel also has a venture capital division - Intel Capital. The first investment of the Fund in 2003 was Russia's largest search engine Yandex. The company has assembled a portfolio of assets in the CIS, Ukraine, and strong projects in Russia, says investment director of Intel Capital in Russia and the CIS, Igor Taber.

Investments in Russia are connected with enormous potential, and risks and that is traditional speaking about emerging markets, Igor Taber adds.