Japanese investment bank Nomura has set aside $100 million to invest in promising startups from a new innovation office in San Francisco.
The bank says the new office will serve as a hub for global collaboration between Nomura and Silicon Valley startups and venture capital firms. The bank adds that it also intends to use the office as a base for the pursuit of co-investment and business partnership opportunities across industries with clients in Japan, Asia, and around the world.
The initiative is the latest stage in a long-term strategic plan aimed at maximising the bank's exposure to cutting edge technological innovation worldwide. It follows the establishment of a cross-divisional FinTech Committee in April 2015 and the opening of the bank's first innovation centre in Tokyo later that same year.
More recently, Nomura has launched accelerator programmes in Japan and India and set up an innovation lab - N-Village - to get first-hand experience with experimental new technologies.