The University of California is planning to invest up to $250 million into an independent fund for startups that commercialize University research projects, the University announced Monday.
The fund, called UC Ventures, comes after the University changed its policy in June to allow investments in companies that commercialize UC research products. It will launch in 2015 if approved by the UC Board of Regents during its Wednesday meeting at UC San Francisco.
“We see this fund as a potential vehicle for providing resources to support the basic research and talent – among both faculty and students – required to develop innovations,” said UC President Janet Napolitano in a statement Monday.
The University plans to establish a way to prevent conflicts of interest between the UC and the startups in which it invests, though the mechanism for this is still under development, said UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein.
The money for UC Ventures would come from the UC’s endowment and would not be taken from tuition or state funding, Klein said. The University currently manages an almost $91 billion investment portfolio.
More than 320 companies have launched because of UC researchers’ inventions from 2009 to 2013, according to an agenda for the regents’ Committee on Investments meeting.
Although the University was previously banned for the past 25 years from investing in startups that commercialize its research, it has invested more than $2 billion in venture capital funds over the last 30 years, according to the document.
Klein said establishing the UC Ventures fund would provide startups with stable, long-term investments.
“(The University) can afford to be in it for the long term,” Klein said. “(Professors and students) don’t have to spend the time fundraising because they know that there is money there.”
A team of non-University staff would manage the fund and the chief investment officer would have the power to approve a budget for the fund and even terminate it.
Compiled by Jeong Park, Bruin senior staff.
Inappropriate and misguided.