JetBlue Launches Venture Capital Subsidiary to Invest in Travel Startups
Photo Caption: The fund and its learnings should help inform and improve JetBlue's own tech-focused services.
Skift Take
Don't expect JetBlue Technology Ventures to start throwing big bucks into travel startups. Instead, the airline is looking for some brand benefit from getting involved in the startup scene and to get access to some new technologies along the way.
JetBlue unveiled a new subsidiary, JetBlue Technology Ventures, which is based in a Silicon Valley incubator and will provide seed funding to early stage technology, travel, and hospitality startups.
JetBlue Technology Ventures is led by its president, Bonny Simi, a JetBlue pilot who had been working on talent acquisition for the airline, and the subsidiary will be located in the Redwood City, California offices of GSVlabs. Other partners in the startup incubator/accelerator arena include Plug and Play and RocketSpace.
JetBlue believes it is the first airline to open a corporate venture capital arm in Silicon Valley and a spokesperson says the venture will be backed by a "multi-million dollar investment."
Simi, who relocated to Silicon Valley more than a month ago, reports to JetBlue executive vice president and chief information officer Eash Sundaram, who will shape the program's direction and integrat
