Japanese cybersecurity solutions company Trend Micro has launched a US$100 million corporate venture fund to back startups and ideas in the emerging technology markets, such as Internet of Things (IoT).

In addition to venture capital, the VC fund will also offer companies access to its global threat intelligence, strategic alliances, as well as its channel of more than 28,000 partners.

In return, working with these investments will uncover insights into emerging ecosystem opportunities, disruptive business models, market gaps and skill-set shortages.

It is not immediately clear as to which other technology verticals or geographies the fund aims to invest in. We have contacted the company for details and will update this piece as we get the response.

The fund is looking to leverage the fast-growing IoT markets in the world. According to Gartner estimates, 26 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020. “The explosion of devices is transforming how the world works, thinks and acts. It is clear that the ecosystem is still evolving and there is work to do to ensure organisations and individuals can operate and live safely in this new reality,” Eva Chen, Founder and CEO for Trend Micro, said in a statement.

“We have a 29-year history of successfully anticipating technology trends to secure all types of environments. The first mega wave we caught was the growth of the PC marketplace; we committed early on to endpoint protection. The second mega wave was all about the cloud; we made a bet early on to securing the cloud and so far we have secured over two billion workload hours on Amazon Web Services alone. Now, we believe the next wave has arrived with IoT; our fund will help us harness this opportunity.”

Founded in 1989, Trend Micro develops layered security for data centres, cloud environments, networks, and endpoints. It has more than 5,000 employees in over 50 countries.