Dell Technologies Inc., has combined the venture capital operations from its two predecessor companies, computer maker Dell Inc and data storage firm EMC Corp, and said it plans to invest about $100 million a year in startups.

Lemnos focuses on pre-seed and seed round funding and prefers to lead or co-lead rounds ranging from $500,000 to $3 million. The firm screens hundreds of entrepreneurs each year and chooses a select few with the tenacity to transform their ideas into viable companies. Working as partners to the entrepreneurs, Lemnos takes the founders' passion for ideas and then helps them to create diverse teams, identify market forces, and uncover addressable audiences.

Renowned early-stage venture capitalist Elad Gil says there is a huge market opportunity for startups looking to solve problems of Fortune 500 companies. In part four of Trusted Insight&rsquo;s interview with Gil, he discusses why companies focusing solely on artificial intelligence are merely talent acquisition pools for larger firms, why the real money is in the hardware behind A.I. and the huge market opportunity for startups solving practical problems.<br /> <br /> Watch Part 1:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thetrustedinsight.com/investment-news/elad-gil-a-great-startup-in-a-terrible-market-will-fail-20161212344/" target="_blank">Elad Gil: A Great Startup In A Terrible Market Will Fail</a><br /> Watch Part 2:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thetrustedinsight.com/investment-news/innovation-in-crowded-markets-can-lead-to-outsized-performance-20161219630/" target="_blank">Innovation In &lsquo;Crowded&rsquo; Markets Can Lead To Outsized Performance<br /> ​</a>Watch Part 3:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thetrustedinsight.com/investment-news/most-healthcare-vc-opportunities-are-bad-20170103072/" target="_blank">Most Healthcare VC Opportunities Are Bad</a><br /> Watch Part 5:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thetrustedinsight.com/investment-news/warning-shift-in-vc-cycle-may-hurt-investors-20170118512/" target="_blank">Warning: Shift In VC Cycle May Hurt Investors</a><br /> Watch Part 6:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thetrustedinsight.com/investment-news/3-major-venture-capital-trends-that-lps-need-to-know-20170125784/" target="_blank">3 Major Venture Capital Trends That LPs Need To Know</a>

Benchmark is doing another big investment before the end of the year, and this time it&rsquo;s in a hardware&nbsp;startup called Cerebras Systems. From what we hear from sources, the round (which we heard others were participating in) is somewhere around $25 million,&nbsp;though it could be as high as $30 million.

We will invest $6 trillion in IoT between 2015 and 2020, which will yield $12.6 trillion ROI over the next decade. Enterprise will make up the majority of the investment dollars, followed by government and consumer.

A panel of 40 judges, including Business Insider's Henry Blodget and Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, chairman of Spitzer Partners, chose the finalists.

Marc Andreessen may be the most dedicated optimist in Silicon Valley. During a year when the public’s attention was often focused on international conflict, mass shootings, and a bitter election, the co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has insistently pointed toward progress. Until it fell silent in September, Andreessen’s hyperactive Twitter feed served as a guide to the good news: people rising out of poverty, the surprising durability of the US economy, and all manner of fast-growing tech products and services.

Two years ago, I was chatting with a very smart venture capitalist about an investment he was making in the drone industry. The hardware side of the drone business would be quickly commodified, he told me, and the real value would be collected by the software makers who built platforms that were used by a wide range of manufacturers.

Hardware is hot &mdash; and poised to get hotter. Venture capital investment in connected device hardware startups reached approximately $1.48 Bn in 2014, more than triple the amount two years earlier.

Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sinovation Ventures and Chengwei Capital have participated in a series B+ round in A.I. Nemo, a Chinese smart hardware and robotics start-up. Founded in 2014, Beijing-based A.I. Nemo has raised nearly US$30 million combined in a series A and series B funding round, the company said without giving out specific financial details. [&hellip;]Visit ChinaMoneyNetwork.com for more daily finance news, including audio and video Internet podcasts covering important investment news and financial events in China. Follow us on Twitter @chinamoneypod subscribe to all episodes on iTunes.