AT&T said it will invest up to $200 million in a venture capital fund to support technologies that run on the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP),an operating system for software-defined networks.
AT&T is working with Minnesota-based Coral’s Communications Industry Platform (CIP) team to identify and invest in start-up companies focused on connected services and platforms.
ONAP is It was born of a merger between a platform created in AT&T Labs and an existing effort in open source. It is being used to manage the company’s own cloud network.
ONAP is now an open source platform hosted by the Linux Foundation. It is quickly becoming the standard for virtualized networks around the world, said AT&T.
AT&T and Coral will identify additional companies to invest in the fund. The CIP members can pool their resources to create innovations to address vital problems.
Andre Fuetsch, CTO and President, AT&T Labs
This investment is part of our push to address the needs of global service providers. We look forward to collaborating with Coral and other CIP members to find – and even create – startup companies to build disruptive technologies to solve these challenges.
Yuval Almog, Chairman and founder of Coral Group
The CIP solutions are targeted at large, move-the-needle opportunities initiated by our strategic collaborators.
