Alexandria-based venture capital firm Columbia Capital is planning a $425 million fund according to SEC filings reported in the Washington Business Journal. The firm invests in information technology, especially infrastructure, wireless spectrum and other related fields. It's done plenty of investing around D.C. in the quarter century since it was founded. Millennial Media, Broadsoft, Virtustream and Summit IG are all on the list of local companies invested in.
Not that Columbia limits itself geographically. It led a $23 million round of funding for Seattle-based 2nd Watch in November. According to WBJ, it even occasionally builds a company from scratch to satisfy some IT need, like Cloud Sherpas, which provides enterprise cloud-based services. Whether or not that will be the path Columbia takes this time remains to be seen, but it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility that the fund is being raised for creation rather than strictly investment.