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More and more car companies are getting their feet in next-generation vehicles. In this case, by buying a stake in a startup company.

2010 seems to be a key year in the paradigm shift from traditional to future (electric?) vehicles. Even if the sales figures are still likely to be low for the next years, most carmakers are committing substantial investment in the new "dominant design". However, the competitive landscape will probably be shaped by new entrants and by startups, that still have to emerge above the horizon

Google and Apple continue to find themselves on opposite sides of the world, as Google has apparently agreed to buy a chip-design start-up populated by former Apple employees. Agnilux, a stealth chip start-up in San Jose, Calif., is Google's latest acquisition. A company spokesman confirmed the parties had reached a deal but provided no further details on one of Google's more curious acquisitions in recent memory. Little is known about Agnilux other than the fact that it was founded by former employees of P.A. Semi, the chip start-up Apple bought in 2008. The New York Times attempted to track down details about the company in February and didn't get very far, but was able to confirm that several former P.A. Semi and Apple employees were among the co-founders, as well as Scott Redman, a former software architect at TiVo.

Small high-tech firms are universally considered to be key for stimulating innovation and economic growth. But what if these companies do not grow, due to limited entrepreneurial ambition, premature acquisitions, limited access to market? This is a key problem for policy-makers, but also for the stakeholders of these firms.

Bloomberg takes a look at Apple's spate of corporate acquisitions over the past six months, which has seen the company reverse a long-standing policy of making very infrequent deals with its recent purchases of Quattro Wireless, Lala Media, Intrinsity, and Siri. In particular, the report points to the growing rivalry between Apple and Google, stoked in large part on the acquisitions front by Google reportedly swooping in to snatch mobile advertising firm AdMob just as Apple was looking to finalize a deal to do so. "The pace has really picked up, there seems to be a strategic shift," said Charlie Wolf, an analyst with Needham & Co. in New York. "It looks like there's an acquisition frenzy going on between Google and Apple in the sense that there's an increasing urgency on Apple's part to stay even if not ahead of Google in the phone space and apps space. One interesting tidbit included in the report is evidence that Apple has sometimes moved very quickly when looking to make an acquisition, even giving targets as little as three hours to agree to a deal. To avoid publicity and possible rival bids, Apple in some cases has offered a target only a three-hour period in which to accept the terms of a sale, according to one executive with knowledge of the situation.

Toyota has agreed to invest $50m in Tesla, the Californian builder of battery-powered cars, as it seeks to extend the dominance it has built in petrol-electric hybrids into the next generation of green vehicles. The deal announced on Thursday makes Toyota the second big global automaker to invest in Tesla, a six-year-old startup founded by Elon Musk, creator of the internet payment service PayPal, and backed by other Silicon Valley luminaries such as Google's founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin. The deal could help Toyota repair its reputation in the US after a series of safety problems that have forced it to recall millions of its cars, pay a $16.4m fine and endure multiple investigations by Congress. Toyota has built a big lead in low-emission cars with its Prius hybrid, which went on sale in 1997, and is by far the best-selling alternative to standard petrol-only vehicles. But some other carmakers are preparing to try and leap-frog Toyota by introducing battery-only cars.