HP launches HP Tech Ventures to invest in 3D-printing, VR, AI, wearable, and IoT startups
Don Clark / Wall Street Journal :
Context & Ripple Effects
HP is standing up a dedicated corporate venture arm aimed at five technology fronts at once — 3D printing, VR, AI, wearables, and IoT — rather than picking one. It lands mid-wave: days earlier, HTC Vive pulled 28 VC firms into its VR Venture Capital Alliance, and within months Razer followed with its own $30M fund for IoT, robotics, VR and gaming startups.
The timing matters because it sits right next to HP's move two months later to sell PCs and other devices to corporate customers as a monthly subscription — the fund gives HP early sight of the technologies that would populate such a service offering, not just its boxes.
First-order effects
- Startups in HP's five target categories gain a strategic investor whose value is distribution into HP's enterprise customer base, not just capital.
- HP gets first-look access to 3D-printing, VR, AI, wearable, and IoT technology that could be folded into its own product roadmap without building each capability in-house.
Second-order effects
- Hardware peers are pushed to match the structure: Razer's zVentures fund and HTC's VC alliance both target overlapping IoT and VR deal flow, so startups can now price strategic money against strategic money.
- The subscription push sharpens the fund's role — technologies HP backs can be bundled into the devices-as-a-service offering, shifting competition from unit sales toward who controls the recurring-revenue stack.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, corporate venture arms become standard infrastructure for hardware companies — Intel Capital's later concentration of investments in AI startups shows the model persisting and narrowing around AI specifically.
- Strategic funds from device makers blur the line between vendor and investor, giving incumbents an early-stage filter on which technologies reach enterprise buyers before independent VCs set the terms.
The trend: Hardware makers are institutionalizing corporate venture arms to secure early access to the technologies disrupting their product lines, with AI emerging as the durable focus.