By Nick Patience

Gateway Inc, which has long thought of itself as one of the most internet-savvy of the PC makers, has taken a $200m stake in internet incubator holding company, CMGI Inc. That amount buys Gateway about 1.8% of the firm, based on Wednesday’s closing price of $239.75. CMGI has majority investments in, among others, advertising and marketing firm Engage Technologies Inc, the Planet Direct Inc web community and NaviNet Inc, which provides outsourced dial-up services to ISPs. It also has minority stakes in a whole host of other companies, including Critical Path, Furniture.com, GeoCities Inc and most famously, Lycos Inc.

Gateway’s VP of business development, Lior Yahalomi, says the companies that interest the PC maker most at present include Ancestry.com, which offers genealogy profiles over the web through its MyFamily.com website; NaviNet which would be useful to plug gaps in the dial-up network Gateway leases from MCI Worldcom Inc’s UUNet Technologies unit; and Engage. Yahalomi says Gateway could well invest a second round with CMGI as well as invest in a company that could combine all the assets at CMGI’s disposal into a super-company. CMGI would not comment on whether it has any plans to create such a firm.

CMGI’s take on the investment is that it is likely to be used for both joint investments in new companies and for sharing technology from the companies that CMGI already incubates. The Andover, Massachusetts-company says it’s too early to say whether the money will be funneled into its venture capital arm @Ventures, or into its existing companies in its internet and direct marketing groups. The agreement means that each company wil give the other’s products and services preferred status, and they have agreed to joint promotion efforts.

CMGI’s investment policy is to only take stakes in companies it feels are doing something new and that do not compete with any of the other companies in its stable. In February, Gateway launched a general computer retail web site in conjunction with veteran computer retailer NECX, in which it also took a 20% stake. It also offers buyers of new PCs costing more than $1,000, a year’s free internet access through its gateway.net ISP. UUNet took over running the service after Gateway dumped Web America Networks Inc, which had provided the service since the fall of 1997.