Thomson Reuters launches $100m venture capital fund

Thomson Reuters Corp is launching a $100 million venture capital fund to invest in early stage companies that serve professional audiences in the legal, tax and accounting, and news media business.

The fund, named "Thomson Reuters Ventures," is part of Chief Executive Steve Hasker's plan to transform the provider of news and information to professionals into what it calls a "content-driven technology business."

The fund will focus on companies in their Series A and Series B investment rounds.

Thomson Reuters wants to identify companies that can help its customers "deliver more value" to their customers - whether that be machine learning for better prediction, or automating for better efficiency, said Pat Wilburn, Chief Strategy Officer at Thomson Reuters.

Wilburn will serve as executive director of the fund.

Thomson Reuters said in August that at the end of the second quarter $700 million remained from a $2 billion mergers and acquisitions budget. It said it had a "robust" pipeline of targets in areas such as automation and small-to-medium cloud-based and software-as-services businesses, reports Reuters.