Intel Corp., the world’s largest chipmaker, said it will invest $125 million in startups run by women and minorities.
The fund will be run by Intel Capital and is additional to the $300 million the company has promised to spend on making its workforce more representative of the U.S. population in terms of gender and ethnicity.
“We more than doubled the number of diverse candidates we’ve hired,” Chief Executive Officer Brian Krzanich said Tuesday at an event at the company’s Santa Clara, California headquarters. “You just can’t go out and say you’ll hire all of the diverse candidates, you’ve got to build a whole ecosystem.”
Silicon Valley companies are coming under increasing scrutiny for the lack of women and minorities among their workers. Krzanich said in January that he’s tying executive compensation, including his own, to Intel’s diversity goal.
Less than 15 percent of venture capital-companies funded in the U.S. have a woman in the executive team. Companies with a woman CEO receive only 3 percent of venture capital dollars and fewer than 1 percent of the founders of Silicon Valley companies are Latino or African American, Intel said.
“The news is not that great,” said Lisa Lambert, an Intel Capital managing director who will run the diversity fund.
