The 23-year old head of the US-based social loyalty marketing company 500Friends is reportedly the youngest entrepreneur Intel Capital has ever backed.

Siemens and Applied Ventures-backed Semprius won backing from Morgan Creek, Illinois and In-Q-Tel in January.

AOL Ventures-backed SalesCrunch made the offer, plus 15% equity in itself, for online meeting software company WebEx, which was bought by Cisco for $3.2bn. Cisco labelled the move "a cute publicity stunt".

The Time Warner-owned media business launches an accelerator.

Google Ventures entrepreneur-in-residence Craig Walker is separately looking at returning to his VoIP roots when he founded the company which becam Google Voice.

The Spain-based Telecoms group plans to invest in 20 small UK businesses.

The corporate venturing fund backed by Nasdaq-listed MDC Partners and Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners invests again in the near $5m series A round raised by Yieldbot, an advertising technology company.

Infinity Group, a Chinese investment firm founded by IDB Group and China Development Bank, backs the Chinese chipmaker.