Energy

The round included backing from existing investor, clean tech asset management group I2BF and SC Green Tech Ventures, an investment arm of Sumitomo Corporation.

Robot manufacturer QBotix attracts $6.5m for its series A round from Siemens Venture Capital and other investors for solar panel maintaining robots.

Geopost, international delivery subsidiary of France-based La Poste, is stepping up its presence in corporate venturing and one of the companies it has could soon have Olympian Usain Bolt as a torch carrier.

The Australia Challenge will see GE and its venture capital partners, Southern Cross, MH Carnegie, Cleantech Ventures, Starfish Ventures and CVC Sustainable Investments, invest $10m in clean-tech start-ups and mid-stage ventures working on low carbon solutions and energy efficiency.

OnLive restructures to leave corporations nursing their pain.

The question taxpayers, voters and employees will start to ask is whether government strategies are priming an innovation capacity in areas that a country, ie its companies primarily, have no interest or capacity to commercialise whether through corporate venturing and then acquisitions?

A123 has been a corporate venturing investor in its customer, Fisker Automotive, but its battery malfunctioned in a test for the electric car maker and so its sales have fallen this year partly as a result and it needed to raise money.

Mitsui Ventures joins investors including Intel Capital, AltEnergy, Braemar Energy Ventures and Novus Energy Partners backing the energy consumption reduction company.