Lisa Lambert and Marcos Battisti, vice-presidents at Intel Captal, left on Friday.
Lambert’s out of office email said: “I have accepted a new job as a managing partner with a Sand Hill Road based private venture capital firm. May 20th is my last day at Intel Capital.”
Lambert, who ran Intel’s $125m diversity fund and was a GCV Rising Star in January’s awards, is expected to say where her new firm is this week.
Wendell Brooks, president of Intel Capital, said: “We congratulate Lisa on a terrific opportunity to focus on software investing, her first love. Lisa has completed a large volume of venture capital equity transactions during her tenure at Intel Capital with strong results. We wish her the very best in her new role and look forward to a relationship with Lisa at her new firm.”
Separately, Battisti, who lead the western Europe and Israel team and was promoted to VP in 2014, said: “I’m moving on from Intel. Last day is Friday [20th].”
He said he expected to decide between alternative offers over the remainder of the month.
Both Lambert and Battisti are two of the most senior executives at Intel Capital, which has been the largest corporate venturing investor over the past 20 years.
Turnover in large organisation is usually to be expected and Intel Capital is one of the largest venture investors in the world with about 70 deal executives and a similar number of support staff.
However, a change in compensation scheme to bonus in 2014 rather than performance fees called carried interest and new leadership announced last year has unsettled some staff, departing executives have said. Intel Capital has been changing its strategy to focus increasingly on strategic relevance to its parent and larger deals under Wendell Brooks, president of Intel Capital since the start of the year after the retirement of Arvind Sodhani was announced a few months earlier. Brooks is ranked second in the GCV Powerlist 2016 and been considering a portfolio sale reportedly up to $1bn of legacy, non-strategic assets.
From analysis by GCV last year, other executives to leave include Sean Cunningham leaving to Trident Capital Cybersecurity, Steve Eichenlaub to M-Six, Robert Rueckert to Sorenson Capital, Merav Weinryb to Qualcomm Ventures, Baris Aksoy to form 37 Capital, Dharmesh Thakker to Battery Ventures, and China managing director Richard Hsu, joining Susquehanna International Group (SIG) to head up its new south-east Asia fund, and Chris Pu, in Hsu’s team, has also recently left to join Australia-based phone operator Telstra’s corporate venturing unit. Christine Wu left in 2014 to become a managing partner at Tendence Capital, while Maciej Zak from Poland, Stephane Goubau from Belgium and Max Krasnykh from Russia also all left in 2014.