Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer sets up startup incubator

Marissa Mayer, the former chief executive officer of web services provider Yahoo, has rented out her old office in California's Palo Alto to set up a startup incubator called Lumi Labs.

Mayer tweeted that the incubator will focus on artificial intelligence and consumer media startups.

Thinking about what's next, I returned to my roots, rented the original Google office where I started my career, and founded a lab with my longtime friend and teammate @eamunozt. A bit of info: https://t.co/6A058GJUvp

— marissamayer (@marissamayer) April 18, 2018

Mayer said she will run the incubator with longtime collaborator Enrique Munoz Torres, who previously worked at Yahoo and Google.

Mayer told told the New York Times that she had named the company in keeping with her fascination for snow. Lumi is the Finnish word for snow.

The former Google executive also said that she has been meeting founders from different sections of the industry to get a sense of current trends. 

Mayer had resigned from Yahoo last June after US telecom conglomerate Verizon Communications Inc acquired its core business for $4.48 billion.

According to some reports, Mayer walked away with $260 million, which included the value of her shares in Yahoo and a severance package.

There had been plenty of speculation in Silicon Valley surrounding her next move. 

Mayer joins other former tech executives in venturing into the startups space.

In March, Travis Kalanick, the controversial founder of cab-hailing firm Uber Technologies Inc., announced that he was setting up an investment fund that will back companies in India and China.   

The 10100 Fund (pronounced ten-one-hundred) will mainly focus on large-scale job creation.

At the beginning of the year, John Chambers, the former executive chairman of Cisco, started his own venture capital firm, called JC2 Ventures, to invest in startups.  

Outside the US, the fund will invest in France, Germany, and India. 

Chambers had picked up a 10% stake in Chennai-based Uniphore Software Systems Pvt. Ltd for an undisclosed amount as a part of the speech recognition software firm’s Series B funding round in November last year. The investment was later attributed to JC2 Ventures.

Chambers has also expressed interest in working with Indian drone startups.