AT&T Investing up to $200 Million in Venture Capital Fund

DALLAS, July 6, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- AT&T* has committed to investing up to $200 million in a venture capital fund as part of its ongoing effort to develop solutions to the toughest technology challenges. AT&T will work with Coral's Communications Industry Platform (CIP) team to identify and invest in start-up companies focused on connected services and platforms. 

"This investment is part of our push to address the needs of global service providers," said Andre Fuetsch, chief technology officer and president of AT&T Labs. "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." 

"The CIP solutions are targeted at large, move-the-needle opportunities initiated by our strategic collaborators," said Yuval Almog, chairman and founder of Coral Group. "We are pleased to welcome AT&T to the CIP."

The fund will invest in technologies that run on the Open Network Automation Platform (ONAP). ONAP is an operating system for software-defined networks. 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.

AT&T and Coal will identify additional companies to invest in the fund. The CIP members can pool their resources to create innovations to address vital problems.

This investment represents AT&T's latest innovation program, including AT&T Labs and the AT&T Foundry innovation centers. The centers were launched in 2011 in part to work closely with the startup and open source communities.

About Coral Group
Coral Group is a venture capital firm that helps build scalable companies that disruptively change markets.  The Coral team has specialized expertise in telecom systems integration, internet-based consumer and enterprise-facing applications and services. The Communications Industry Platform combines venture capital and integrated solutions to help communication service providers around the world solve strategic challenges through innovation on a global scale.  Additional information is available at www.coralgrp.com.

*About AT&T
AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) helps millions around the globe connect with leading entertainment, business, mobile and high speed internet services. We offer the nation's best data network** and the best global coverage of any U.S. wireless provider. We're one of the world's largest providers of pay TV. We have TV customers in the U.S. and 11 Latin American countries. Nearly 3.5 million companies, from small to large businesses around the globe, turn to AT&T for our highly secure smart solutions. 

AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc. Additional information about AT&T products and services is available at about.att.com. Follow our news on Twitter at @ATT, on Facebook at facebook.com/att and on YouTube at youtube.com/att.

© 2017 AT&T Intellectual Property. All rights reserved. AT&T, the Globe logo and other marks are trademarks and service marks of AT&T Intellectual Property and/or AT&T affiliated companies. All other marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

**Claim based on the Nielsen Certified Data Network Score. Score includes data reported by wireless consumers in the Nielsen Mobile Insights survey, network measurements from Nielsen Mobile Performance and Nielsen Drive Test Benchmarks for Q4 2016 + Q1 2017 across 121 markets.

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SOURCE AT&T Inc.

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