This morning find out about a boost in fundraising, but also in competition; who the villains of the financial crisis are and Google Ventures launching its iOS app worldwide.

Corporate venturing is on the rise. This was on display again in the first quarter, when 222 investments from corporate venture groups around the world took place worth $4 billion, according to Global Corporate Venturing.

Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Andreessen Horowitz have come together to form the Glass Collective, an investment syndicate made up of the three firms to provide seed funding to startups developing for Google’s Glass and the Glass ecosystem. The announcement came on a Website from Google Ventures’ Managing Partner Bill Maris, Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Marc Andreessen and Kleiner General Partner John Doerr.

Clean Power Finance said it raised $37 million in growth equity from existing investors Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Claremont Creek Ventures. New investors in the round include three utility holding companies, including Edison International, and Hennessey Capital.

creativeLIVE has secured funding from Creative Artists Agency, William Morris Endeavor, CrunchFund and Google Ventures among others. The new investors join Greylock Partners to bring creativeLIVE’s total funding to $8 million.

This morning in First Read find out about Samsung’s funding boost; RRJ’s mega venture capital target and CVC’s second deal in South East Asia in less than a month.

It used to be that you had to have an actual company for capture investors’ attention. Last March, entrepreneur and investor Paul Graham upended that basic standard, inviting candidates with no plan whatsoever into his Y Combinator program. Now, Upstart, a 10-month-old, 10-person company based in Palo Alto, is making even Graham’s unconventional thinking seem quaint.

Ready for a quick year-end update on Google Ventures? As you know, Google last month increased the annual cash it hands to its venture arm to $300 million from $200 million. Here is a breakdown of its investments by sector.

23andMe, Inc. said it raised more than $50 million in a Series D financing with new investor Yuri Milner joined by existing investors Google co-founder Sergey Brin, 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki, New Enterprise Associates, Google Ventures and MPM Capital. The company said the Series D investment, along with rapidly decreasing costs, allowed it to lower the price of its Personal Genome Service to $99,

ClearStory Data, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based company that’s developing new tools to explore corporate data, has raised a $9 million Series A financing from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The company’s seed round investors, Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures, which gave the company and undislosed amount of money back in March, also participated.