UC Riverside Launches $10 Million Highlander Venture Capital Fund
The University of California, Riverside has created a $10 million Highlander Venture Fund (HVF). The Highlander Fund, created with Silicon Valley’s Vertical Venture Partners, will provide seed capital to qualified opportunities within the university for students and faculty members, and entrepreneurs from Riverside County. The fund will target technologies that can be matched with a […]
Research Center IMEC creates smart tech VC fund, targets €100 million
The imec.xpand fund is targeting a total of €100 million to €120 million (up to about $135 million) and has already secured a significant amount of that according to Tom Vanhoutte, who is a manager of the fund alongside Peter Vanbekbergen. The fund is looking to support ideas and projects across the range of hardware […]
Google AI Fund Leads $10.5M Into Algorithmia
Google’s AI fund has made its first public investment, leading a $10.5 million Series A funding round for Algorithmia, a marketplace and enterprise solution that enables developers to tap into its catalog of 3,500 algorithms, functions and machine-learning models. According to news from TechCrunch, other participants in the round include new investor Work-Bench, as well as current investors […]
Rolls-Royce To Open Turbine Lab at Purdue University
s part of a public-private partnership Rolls-Royce will establish a $24 million turbine lab for compact gas turbine engines at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Development and testing of next-generation turbine airfoils will be housed at Purdue’s Zucrow Laboratories, one of the nation’s largest university propulsion laboratory for research focused on reducing fuel consumption […]
Sanovas Prepares for Global Expansion by Creating Innovation Center and Venture Capital Fund in China
Sanovas, Inc., a Life Science technology company innovating the next-generation of micro-invasive medical technologies, announced today that it has achieved an agreement with the People’s Government of Suzhou, China, to establish a venture capital fund and Innovation Center at the Suzhou Institute of Nanotechnology and NanoBionics (SINANO) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences located within […]
Five-yr Performance Study Shows PE Investment Through FOFs Just as Good as Direct Investment in VC funds
Private-equity investments can be enticing, but also complicated. It can be expensive for institutional investors, endowments, and pension funds to find and monitor private-equity investments—which can then be illiquid and difficult to scale. A private-equity fund of funds, which holds a portfolio of other funds, potentially provides diversification and economies of scale, as well as […]
LifeArc, née MRC Technology, sets up high-risk seed fund for academics
LifeArc has set up a seed fund to invest in early preclinical projects that are overlooked because of the high risk of failure at that stage of R&D. The British medical research charity, formerly known as MRC Technology, sees the fund filling a perceived gap in the commercial investment landscape. That gap covers the stage […]
Venture capital firm bets on New Mexico
When Brian Birk, the managing partner of Sun Mountain Capital, talks about venture investing in New Mexico, his voice projects an almost evangelical fervor. The man is a believer: “New Mexico is a technically sophisticated place with a very deep talent pool,” he said. “Look at Silicon Valley. There are startups everywhere, but little innovation. […]
Good Read: Venture Philanthropy Straddles Two Worlds in Healthcare Tech
In January, a new venture investment fund opened in Boston with $42 million in its pocket and a goal of raising $80 million within two years. The new fund, called the JDRF T1D Fund, quickly invested in three early-stage start-ups. Just like traditional venture capital funds, the T1D Fund plans to work closely with start-ups […]
Gov McAuliffe announces Virginia Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund Awards
Governor Terry McAuliffe announced $2.7 million in funding to support 40 Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund awards representing targeted areas of promising research commercialization, including advanced manufacturing, cyber security, energy, environment, information technology, life sciences, and unmanned systems. “The Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund has provided funding to Virginia’s innovators at critical points in their research, helping […]