Michael Rocke started out his technical career as a staff engineer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, working on government energy research at the SHIVA ICF (forerunner to the current National Ignition Facility) project. Mike designed and built advanced materials deposition systems for laser ablative x-ray diagnostics.

In 1977, Mike took a hiatus from engineering to do professional car racing, moving up from an SCCA amateur racer to the professional Formula Atlantic Series sponsored by Ford. Mike's racing included most North American tracks, including the 1st Formula Atlantic event that was held in Long Beach as a preliminary event to the USGP Formula 1 race, where he finished 7th out of 48 entries.

Intel Corp. was the next engineering step for Mike. At Intel, he worked at various facilities, the last eight years at the D2 development site as engineering manager with Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Group, responsible for development and engineering process work on Intel's advanced Pentium microprocessors and Strata Flash memory. Responsible for engineering for manufacturability, introducing innovative problem solving (TRIZ), fab process transfer to Europe, and managing the first Intel Factory ISO9000 quality certification.

Mike then took on the role at Intel Corp. as the director of strategic investments with the Intel Capital Group, leading investments in support of Intel's Mobile Computing Platforms Group. He was responsible for developing the strategic investment roadmap that helped grow Intel technology, products, and initiatives associated with future mobile computing.

With his engineering and venture knowledge background, Mike has two patents: in hybrid power systems and in integrated platform and fuel-cell cooling. One of his Intel Capital investments was an advanced battery startup called Zinc Matrix Power, where he met the founder and current Transonic founder/CEO Mike Cheiky.

Mike was with Intel Capital for approximately five years and served on multiple company boards. Three investments that Mike was involved with from this time period have gone public: CSR (Cambridge, U.K.), PolyFuel (California), and Cap-XX (Sydney, Australia).

Upon leaving Intel, Mike formed Rocke Capital Ventures in December 2004. Based in Dallas, Texas, it was formed to support both local and global requests around new investments in technologies such as clean-technology alternative power, advanced integrated computing, and new automotive power technology. As a result of his energy interest and board involvement, Mike was asked to become CEO of the Virginia-based energy-harvesting company AdaptivEnergy.

In 2007, Mike joined Transonic Combustion full-time to do business development combining his love of both automotive technology and advanced clean energy.