Microsoft has fleshed out its ambitious seed programme announced last year.

The pair's investment has helped fuel cell maker Acal roughly double the money it has raised in its history.

Before Inventages, D'Abbadie worked at Technikos, a UK-based medical device venture capital firm, and has joined Spark Impact.

Patel had been made managing partner of Best Buy Capital in late 2008 before becoming president of the company's Asia operations last year and has joined venture capital firm VantagePoint Capital Partners.

The European Venture Club has organised a roundtable on 28-29 June 2011 so corporate venturers and venture capital firms can discuss the trends in the industry.

The corporate venturing arm of US chip maker Intel has sealed four deals - Aldebaran Robotics, JouleX, Altergeo, Sapato - after breaching the landmark $10bn invested last month.

Fusion-io floats with corporate backers including Dell Ventures, Sumitomo Ventures and reportedly Samsung Ventures.

The corporate venturing arm of technology equipment maker Qualcomm has joined a $10m funding round raised by US and Netherlands-based semiconductor manufacturer Cavendish Kinetics.

French drugs company Sanofi has led the $7.5m round into cancer treatment company Esperance Pharmaceuticals.

The series B round follows Holtzbrinck Ventures (HV) spinning out from German media parent Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.