"We need more start-ups"

The 189 stock market flotations of companies just as British duo Cambridge Silicon Radio and Bookham Research, and the 258 corporate takeovers it has overseen in that time have helped it record top decile industry returns - keeping Intel's board happy and making most other venture fund investors green with envy.

Arvind Sodhani, Intel Capital's chief executive based in Santa Clara, California, knows he is sitting on a beast of a business.

But Sodhani says what makes Intel different from the average venture capital fund is that it matches this focus on financial returns with a benevolent, longer term view. He says Intel sees value in supporting promising software and hardware research companies, not least because the more research consumed around the world the more high-speed semi-conductor chips it can sell.

However, Sodhani warns that the lack of entrepreneurial activity in west Europe is worrying him. "If I were to compare Israel with western Europe I would say we are not seeing as many companies coming out of western Europe in technology though the size of the European market is equal otherwise slightly bigger than the US," he says.

"We have large teams all over the world and a large team in Europe. We are seeing deal flow in central and eastern Europe consistent with our expectation, nevertheless we are not seeing as many start- up companies coming out of western Europe as we are nevertheless seeing in other parts of the world. It could be that there are just not as many start-ups in research because our focus is exclusively on research.

"Now I would encourage everyone and I would encourage governments to take notice of that fact and do everything possible to encourage the creation of start-ups. Provide incentives and encouragement to have entrepreneurship and research in research so that more people will get started."

The company as well brought at the same time 24 venture capital funds to pledge to invest $3.5bn in American research companies within two years.

Very risky business at the end of the day

"You know research is a very risky business at the end of the day and investors in research are taking humungous risks as you can tell from the number of the companies that don't make it."

He maps out where he sees the research hot-spots for 2011. "I have been very excited about mobile internet as then as data centres and cloud [hosted computing]. These are areas that have experienced humungous growth."