[THE INVESTOR] Chipmaker Qualcomm’s venture capital arm Qualcomm Ventures said Aug. 29 that the firm has jointly invested 3.5 billion won ($3.1 million) in monitoring solution firm WhaTap Labs with two other venture capital firms K-Cube Ventures and Altos Ventures.

The investment is part of the US chipmaker’s initiative to nurture Korea’s venture and startup sector. On his visit to Seoul in July 2015, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs pledged that the company would expand its investments in promising Korean companies. Since then, the US firm has run funds to support Korean ventures and startups.

WhaTap Labs is a developer of a cloud-based IT services monitoring system that detects and analyzes technical glitches of data servers and software solutions in seconds.

Established in 2015 by founder Lee Dong-in, WhaTap Labs rolled out the web-based, or system-as-a-service, system management system for the first time in Korea.

“Qualcomm Ventures has kept its eyes on WhaTap Labs’s technology and its impressively fast growth for over a year,” said Kwon Il-hwan, a director of Qualcomm Ventures, adding the firm’s technology will play a vital role in the current computing environment where transition to cloud picks up speed, especially in the cloud-based infrastructure for mobile app development.”

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)