While grousing to
ZDNet that venture investment is slowing in Europe, Intel Capital's U.K. managing director Ashish Patel also was upfront in identifying five principal areas the venture arm of the chipmaking giant is focusing on.
Patel noted that venture investment in European companies hit a record in 2005 at €42.6 billion ($61.1 billion), but fell to €28 billion last year and hit only €4.6 billion in the first half of 2007. He noted that the companies that are getting funded are getting strong support, but urged European VCs to give more early-stage companies a chance.
Patel said the most promising areas of investment are cleantech, mobile Internet, digital media and healthcare information technology, also pointing to countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China as the top emerging markets for VC.
On the home front, Intel didn't need to rely on other VCs for early-stage funding in its latest investment. Intel spinoff GainSpan Corp. won continued support from the chipmaker's venture arm in a $20 million Series B
investment to support recently launched wireless sensor chipsets that enable extremely low-power communications devices operating on standard Wi-Fi infrastructure. Other investors include Opus Capital, New Venture Partners, OVP Venture Partners and Sigma Partners, and they cite GainSpan's achievements as an independent company as an example of Intel's New Business Initiatives incubator's success in nurturing noncore businesses within the company as standalone entities.
- Clifford Carlsen See Dec. 18 story from ZDNet See Dec. 19 story from Tech Confidential
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