Venture Capital's Space Shot

By next week, NASA hopes to have gathered a bunch of ideas from investing entrepreneurs on the particulars of its proposed Red Planet fund, and the aim is to get something launched before the end of this year. NASA Venture Capital

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has run its own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, since 1999. It is widely considered to be a success, though performance numbers are hard to come by. In-Q-Tel was founded out of the recognition that government development of information technology was not keeping pace with the blistering speed of new IT ideas being developed in the commercial sector.

The U.S. Army has a fund, too, OnPoint, which invests in power and energy projects and defense systems.

Snippet from Forbes.com, by Liz Moyer, February 21, 2006

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