T-Mobile Unveils Venture Capital Fund to Fuel 5G Innovation

Rich Grant
Risky Business
Published in
5 min readOct 23, 2020
Image: Shutterstock & T-Mobile

We are proud to announce the launch of T-Mobile Ventures and our ongoing work with T-Mobile to help manage the fund. Below you can read the official press release, which is also published here. For additional information, check out this article from Jeremy Horwitz at VentureBeat.

-Rich Grant

What’s the news

T-Mobile Ventures is a new multi-year investment fund designed to fuel 5G innovation by backing early and emerging growth companies developing transformative 5G products and services for the T-Mobile network.

Why it matters

With the first and only nationwide Standalone 5G network and a multi-band 5G strategy, now is the time for entrepreneurs and developers to build the applications and services that will unleash T-Mobile’s 5G network.

Who it’s for

Early and growth stage companies building the next big thing in 5G.

BELLEVUE, Wash. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) continues its mission to fuel 5G innovation with today’s announcement of T-Mobile Ventures, a new multi-year investment fund focused on early and emerging growth companies developing groundbreaking 5G products and services for the T-Mobile network.

“T-Mobile Ventures is part of our mission to give customers the best 5G network in the country — one that will serve all Americans, stimulate competition and create tremendous economic value,” said Jason Young, Senior Vice President of Partnerships and T-Mobile Ventures. “With our 5G network at the foundation, we see massive opportunity across both business and consumer segments, and we’re excited to help fuel the wave of 5G applications coming to market in the years ahead.”

T-Mobile Ventures’ portfolio companies will benefit from T-Mobile’s network and engineering expertise, go-to-market infrastructure, and investment backing as they work to develop, test and bring to market the next big thing in 5G. T-Mobile Ventures will initially target the development of 5G products and services in areas such as the following:

  • Edge Compute — helping businesses, consumers and developers achieve faster application response times in distributed cloud and networking environments
  • Security — protecting customers’ networks, devices and applications from security and privacy threats
  • Future of Work — powering a more modern, distributed workforce through advanced communication and collaboration
  • Industrial IoT — connecting people and things at scale with rapid data collection and processing via connected devices and sensors

T-Mobile 5G, A Platform for Innovation

T-Mobile, first in the country to launch nationwide 5G and first in the world to launch Standalone 5G, has the largest 5G network by far, covering more than 260 million people across nearly 1.4 million square miles. With Sprint now part of T-Mobile, the Un-carrier is quickly lighting up mid-band 5G with 2.5 GHz spectrum in more than 200 cities and towns, bringing customers in these areas average download speeds of 300 Mbps and peak speeds up to 1 Gbps. And with a nationwide Standalone 5G network available in more than 7,500 cities and towns, now is the time for developers to build transformative 5G applications. In Standalone 5G areas, T-Mobile is already seeing up to a 40% improvement in latency during testing, and that is just the beginning of what can be done with Standalone 5G.

“Compelling 5G use cases span the range of spectrum bands from low, mid to high, and only T-Mobile has these assets giving it a 5G network that can support all use cases across every industry,” said Neville Ray, President of Technology at T-Mobile. “Now is the time for the developers, entrepreneurs and creators to make the magic happen with products and services that will unleash the potential of our 5G network.”

With its supercharged 5G network as the foundation, T-Mobile is working to build the 5G ecosystem. The Un-carrier collaborates with universities and standards bodies to support 5G research and development. It also runs the award-winning T-Mobile Accelerator and is a co-founder of the 5G Open Innovation Lab.

T-Mobile Ventures works with corporate venture capital firm Touchdown Ventures to help manage the fund.

For more information about T-Mobile Ventures, visit www.t-mobile.com/ventures.

Follow T-Mobile’s Official Twitter Newsroom @TMobileNews to stay up to date with the latest company news.

About T-Mobile

T-Mobile U.S. Inc. (NASDAQ: TMUS) is America’s supercharged Un-carrier, delivering an advanced 4G LTE and transformative nationwide 5G network that will offer reliable connectivity for all. T-Mobile’s customers benefit from its unmatched combination of value and quality, unwavering obsession with offering them the best possible service experience and undisputable drive for disruption that creates competition and innovation in wireless and beyond. Based in Bellevue, Wash., T-Mobile provides services through its subsidiaries and operates its flagship brands, T-Mobile, Metro by T-Mobile and Sprint. For more information please visit: http://www.t-mobile.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201021005685/en/

Media Contacts
T-Mobile US, Inc. Media Relations
MediaRelations@t-mobile.com

Investor Relations Contact
T-Mobile US, Inc.
investor.relations@t-mobile.com
http://investor.t-mobile.com

Source: T-Mobile U.S. Inc.

Rich Grant is a co-founder and managing director of Touchdown Ventures, a Registered Investment Adviser that provides “Venture Capital as a Service” to help corporations launch and manage their investment programs.

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Rich Grant
Risky Business

Founder/VC @ Touchdown Ventures; proud alumnus of Wharton, UCSB, Comcast, Sony Pics & Lehman Bros. Huge Angels, Eagles & Lakers fan.