Susan Searle, former chief executive of Imperial Innovations, joins the board of UK-listed defence development group Qinetiq.

Google Ventures, the corporate venturing unit owned by search engine company Google, has co-invested with Spark Labs Global Ventures in a $3m funding round for The Orange Chef, which has developed clever connectable kitchen products for home use.

Weibo has become the latest Chinese company to tap the US public markets, targeting $500 million from its initial public offering, and plans to leverage its partnership with minority shareholder Alibaba to maxmise advertising revenue.

American Express (Amex), a US-based credit card company and multinational financial services corporation, has unveiled plans to promote greater financial inclusion in the US, including through closer collaboration with technology startups. Dan Schulman, American Express group president, Enterprise Growth, said, “Technology is rapidly changing the face of financial services, yet tens of millions of Americans […]

Rakuten Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of Japanese electronic commerce and Internet company, Rakuten, has led and invested in a $3.5 m series round of funding that will accelerate R&D activities with strategic partner ViSenze, an online visual search technology company.

Japan internet services company and incubator, Digital Garage, has contributed an additional $7.5m in a $10m round to US start-up investor and product launch company, betaworks. The latest funding is part of a larger $20m funding round that was announced in December 2013. Since 2008 the company has raised a reported $47.5m.

Venturing in the services sector was on a roll last year, as
the intermediaries that help the business world function
capitalised on their strong relationships.

Medium, the US-based collaborative publishing start-up, founded by Evan Williams, who is one of the minds behind Twitter and Blogger, has just closed a $25m round of financing, the company confirmed. The company started operating a year ago and has attracted investors such as private equity firm Greylock Partners, Google Ventures, SV Angel’s Ron Conway, […]

Mobile payments startup Square’s origins have been thrown into dispute after a Washington University in St. Louis professor has filed a law suit alleging fraud patent infringement. Professor Robert E. Morley has alleged that Square’s founders, Twitter chairman and co-founder Jack Dorsey and James McKelvey, froze Morley out from the business. The complaint reads: “The […]

The NBCUniversal News Group has taken a minority stake in US social video start-up NowThisNews. Existing backers of the Lerer-start-up include Softbank Capital, Bedrocket, Lerer Ventures and Oak Investment Partners. The two companies will work with each other out of New York. Prior to the NBCUniversal transaction the start-up had raised just under $10m.

Netcall, a software company increasingly interested in how social media data can transform and benefit client business, has invested up to  £250,000 in a £1m series A round for UK-based Macranet (trading as Sentiment). Elderstreet VCT also participated in the funding. Sentiment’s cloud-based platform monitors global social media, providing solutions in the area of customer […]

How do you make free education commercially viable, asks TAG Assessment managing director Matt Wingfield.

DataSift, a social data platform which enables companies to aggregate, filter and extract insights from social networks, has raised $42m in series C funding.

Global Corporate Venturing recorded 57 investments during November worth a total of $1.2bn – in October there were 60 investments worth $1.2bn – and six exits worth $2.45bn, although exit prices were largely undisclosed and the initial public offering (IPO) of social network Twitter accounted for $1.82bn of the total – in October there were […]

Thank you for all the help and support for our various websites, e-zines, magazines, webinars and events this past year, and enjoy the holiday season over the next few weeks.

In bioscience or any other field that universities spin out companies into, they are generally dealing with technology that is cutting-edge, utilises modern and innovative thinking, and is based on science and facts. If it works so well for technology, why should our thinking on leadership be any different?

Inaugural and sold-out Global University Venturing Summit and Awards celebrated in London

Our round up of corporate venturing in the third quarter.

Social networking service Twitter files IPO registration with a suggested valuation of $12.8bn.

InVent Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of Thailand communication services group, Intouch, has invested in Computerlogy and Meditech Solution. The combined deals were valued at $1.08m.