Cancer care group Helsinn has put $50m into a corporate venturing unit called Helsinn Investment Fund that will target early-stage companies.

The corporates have joined eight other insurance companies in backing the Iowa-based Global Insurance Accelerator, which is preparing for its third year.

The Alexa Prize will seek to find university students developing artificial intelligence technology for Amazon's Alexa voice assistant.

KU Leuven's Centre for Drug Design and Discovery has closed a $67.5m commercialization fund with the support of the European Investment Fund.

Ideo has joined forces with VC firm Genuine Startups to jointly launch a venture capital firm dubbed D4V.

Canada's new Liberal government has set out an Innovation Agenda and has been preparing support measures for local corporate venturing after research by Global Corporate Venturing* showed its relative underperformance compared to other countries.

GE Ventures and Allied Minds have established a strategic alliance to commercialise technologies from both partners' pipelines.

Line has committed capital to funds managed by DAG Ventures and Korelya Capital, with the latter also attracting money from Naver for a total of $112.

Merck Sharp & Dohme and Wayra UK have joined forces again to welcome a second cohort to their digital health accelerator program Velocity Health.