Tom Whiteaker's career in corporate venture spans more than 25 years, and has involved work with Visa, Hartford Ventures and BBVA as well as IBM.
Tom Whiteaker has left IBM’s investment arm, a unit he cofounded, to form a VC fund with IBM Ventures colleagues Ben Daniels and Caitlin Dullanty.
The new fund — the name and size has yet to be decided on — will invest in early-stage quantum, enterprise AI and cybersecurity startups.
Whiteaker said he chose to leave IBM Ventures because he wanted to embark on a new chapter. “I’m leaving IBM in a very good place. It’s been an amazing journey. I love that team. It is just time to go do something new.”
He will be based in Colorado, in an area he describes as an “underserved middle part of the country with much better valuations.” Team member Daniels is based on the US east coast and Dullanty on the west coast.
Whiteaker’s long career in corporate venture goes back to 1999/2000 when he joined Visa to head its new venture arm, Visa Ventures. At the time, the internet had just started and Visa wanted to understand how it could get involved in online payments. The company was an early investor in Yahoo and domain name registry Verisign.
He then moved on to cofound Hartford Ventures, the CVC of the Connecticut-based insurer, with Jacqueline LeSage, who went on to head the now-closed Munich Re Ventures. The $100m insurtech fund was an early investor in EV charging infrastructure company ChargePoint.
After four years at Hartford Ventures, Whiteaker cofounded BBVA Ventures, the CVC arm of the banking group. The team were early investors in Docusign and Coinbase. Whiteaker led the spin-out of the corporate venture unit, which was renamed Propel Ventures Partners, with BBVA as the sole limited partner.
When he joined IBM in 2019, the US technology company was not interested in investing directly in startups, says Whiteaker. He found an advocate for a CVC fund in colleague Ben Daniels. “Ben and I teamed up early on and chipped away at the iceberg and started to go on a journey to convince IBM why they needed to invest,” says Whiteaker.
Their efforts paid off when, three years ago, IBM formed a $500m enterprise AI investment fund. The team has invested in more than 25 companies since the launch.
Whiteaker says he expects to keep in contact with corporates through his new fund. “My entire career has been in and around corporate venture. I believe in corporate venture. There is so much value we can provide corporate venture players and vice versa.”
See all the recent IBM Ventures-backed startup deals the CVC Funding Round Database
