The corporate has donated $200,000 to bring University of Michigan philanthropic seed fund Accelerate Blue halfway toward its $2m initial target.
E-commerce and cloud computing services firm Amazon has donated $200,000 of capital to University of Michigan (U-M)’s philanthropic seed fund Accelerate Blue Fund, bringing its corpus to almost $1m.
The contribution marks Accelerate Blue’s first corporate gift and takes the vehicle halfway towards its initial $2m target. Fundraising efforts began in October 2019 and the fund has a long-term target of $20m.
The fund’s other donors include Wendell Brooks, an alumnus of U-M’s engineering department and president of Intel Capital, who seeded the fund, and Richard Douglas, chairman of U-M Tech Transfer’s National Advisory board, as well as Robert Bronstein, co-founder of student housing operator Scion.
Don Sweeney, CEO of robotic process automation services provider Ashling Partners, and another U-M alumnus, has also donated together with his wife Erica Sweeney.
Accelerate Blue will supply between $25,000 and $250,000 per deal to early-stage spinouts in spaces such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, mobility and sports.
The fund will start investing later in 2020 and has an evergreen structure enabling it to retain all inbound revenues to sustain future dealmaking.
Accelerate Blue is intended to improve access to early-stage capital for spinouts operating in the US Midwest, where U-M estimates raising $500,000 can take almost two years longer compared with startups based on the East or West coasts.
The fund also hopes to lure more seasoned business management into its ecosystem, soliciting founding teams with at least one member focused solely on business operations.
Kelly Sexton, U-M’s associate vice-president for research, technology transfer and innovation partnerships, said: “The support from Amazon is significant because it demonstrates the interest of corporations in learning more about the incredible high-tech startup companies spinning out of U-M’s research enterprise.
“In light of the economic uncertainty created by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Accelerate Blue Fund will be more important now than ever before in order to ensure that U-M’s startups have the opportunity to change the world and drive economic growth.”
