Amy Banse, currently the president of Comcast Interactive Media, is shifting into a job as head of a new Silicon Valley-based equity fund aimed at making digital investments for the television cable giant, as well as its new NBC Universal unit, according to sources with knowledge of the plans.

While most of the attention related to the soon-to-be-completed merger of Comcast with NBC U has been on the musical chairs of its high-profile news and entertainment divisions, this move is potentially significant for the companies by putting a stake in the ground–and a presence–for it on the West Coast.

As part of the shift, sources said, Banse will be charged with combining two existing corporate investment funds: NBC U’s Peacock Equity and Comcast Interactive Capital.

The New York-based Peacock Equity is a $250 million fund that was founded as a joint venture in 2007 by GE Capital and NBC U.

Its investments have ranged from $3 million to $25 million each, including a lot of online advertising start-ups such as Adify and the Rubicon Project.

Comcast Interactive Capital–founded in 1999 and based in Philadelphia, where Comcast’s HQ is–has $500 million under management.

It has focused on broadband, interactive and enterprise businesses.

According to its Web site, “early successful investments” include About.com, CitySearch, Half.com, TiVo, and VeriSign.”

Current investments include SB Nation, BlackArrow and JiWire.

It is not clear how much more money the new still-unnamed equity fund will raise, but it will be aimed at early-stage companies, said sources.

The combined fund will debut by the end of the year or early next year.

Banse’s shift to become a VC comes after many years of leading Comcast’s online strategy, which has included the acquisition of the Fandango movie ticketing site and Daily Candy, an email newsletter.

She has also been in charge of the development and management of Comcast’s many Web sites, including Comcast.net, Xfinity.com and Fancast.

MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka recently reported that the high-profile Banse was moving out of her post, which was being split up into two jobs.

Many thought she would likely depart the company, but it appears she will stay for a while longer at least.

As it happens, Banse will be in San Francisco this week for the Web 2.0 conference, so please be sure to give her a warm welcome and explain “Fear the Beard” to a likely Phillies fan-atic.

And just to get acquainted in advance, here is her bio from the Comcast Web site:

Amy Banse serves as President of Comcast Interactive Media (CIM), a division of Comcast Corporation that is responsible for developing and operating online tools and businesses focused on entertainment, information and communication.

Since founding CIM in December of 2005, Ms. Banse has led Comcast’s online strategy, overseeing the acquisition of Fandango (the movie ticketing site), Daily Candy (the popular email newsletter), Plaxo (the smart contacts site), and thePlatform (the industry-leading provider of digital media publishing solutions) as well as the in-house development and management of, Comcast.net and xFinity.com(Comcast’s portals), Fancast, (a leading tv entertainment site), xFinitytv (Comcast ‘s online video portal), and Swirl (Daily Candy’s sample sales site). In this role, she has grown CIM into an 800 person team with significant digital capabilities and has played a key part in the industry’s development of its TV Everywhere strategy and in Comcast’s execution of that strategy, Fancast/xFinitytv.

Ms. Banse joined Comcast in 1991 as an in-house attorney responsible for programming acquisition. Most recently she served as Executive Vice President of Content Development where she oversaw the development of Comcast’s cable network portfolio including the company’s investments in E! Entertainment Television, The Golf Channel, and VERSUS and the development and launch of G4, PBS KIDS Sprout, TV One and Comcast’s sports networks.

Ms. Banse has represented CIM and Comcast as a featured speaker in venues around the country discussing the rapid evolution of content consumption in a digital world and the opportunities and challenges facing the cable and entertainment industries. She has been named among the “Most Powerful Women in Cable” and the “Top Programmers to Watch” by CableWorld magazine. She has also been named among the Cable 100 by Multichannel News and the Digital Power list, by The Hollywood Reporter. She was honored as a “Wonder Woman” by Multichannel News and Women in Cable Telecommunications (WICT) in 2004, received WICT’s Geraldine B. Laybourne Fearless Award in 2009 and ProMax’s Brand Builder Award in 2010 Ms. Banse sits on the Board of The Morris Arboretum and Springside School for Girls. In 2007 she received “The Distinguished Alumni Award” from Springside School, and in 2006 she was honored by Girls, Inc. as an outstanding role model for girls during their annual Celebration Luncheon. Ms. Banse is also a member of The Forum of Executive Women, the Philadelphia region’s premier women’s organization.

Ms. Banse received a BA from Harvard University and a JD from Temple University Law School. She and her husband and their four children live in Philadelphia.

Sources familiar with the company say that current digital head Amy Banse is moving out of her post, which is being split up into two jobs. One of them has already gone to her former lieutenant Matt Strauss, who will head up the properties directly connected to Comcast’s core cable business, most notably its Fancast/Xfinity TV portal. The other job will be overseeing NBC U’s digital businesses–everything from NBC.com to iVillage to its stake in Hulu–as well as Comcast properties like Daily Candy and Fandango.

Banse might have been an obvious candidate for that gig, but it’s not panning out that way. Instead, she will continue to run Comcast’s sites until Washington signs off on the pending deal between Comcast and NBC U’s owner GE (GE).

Then she’s supposed to end up in a new, yet-to-be determined role at the cable giant. She’s a lawyer who has held multiple positions at Comcast since joining in 1991, so in theory she could end up in a variety of places within the company. Comcast (CMCSA) declined to comment.

Also left unresolved: Who will run the NBC U digital/Comcast portfolio once the two companies merge? NBC U doesn’t have a single digital czar but instead has a cadre of people with digital duties. It’s unclear whether Comcast will want to keep that structure or put in a single person to run the whole thing.

It looks like the local market is heating up even more, with MSNBC.com announcing the acquisition of Chicago-based EveryBlock.

MSNBC.com–a joint venture of Microsoft (MSFT) and GE (GE) unit NBC Universal–paid several million dollars for the “hyper-local” information site, which is up and running in 15 cities, including New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and Boston, sources said.

In June, Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL paid about $10 million to buy Patch Media.

The New York-based start-up is a platform that does deeply localized coverage of communities on a range of topics, from announcements to news to events to obituaries. It is aimed at competing with local newspapers and other media.

EveryBlock takes a slightly different approach, scouring a mass of publicly available data in a variety of U.S. cities from a variety of public records–such as crime stats, building permits and restaurant inspections–and reassembling them into more comprehensible and geographically relevant news feeds, depending on what a user asks for.

It also pulls up related Flickr photos and information from Web sites like Yelp and Daily Candy and can get very granular, down to keeping track of what is happening on your block or neighborhood.

Maps are also deeply integrated into EveryBlock, as it was on an earlier effort–ChicagoCrime.org–of founder Adrian Holovaty.

The innovative little start-up has a tiny staff of a half-dozen, still calls itself a “project” on its Web site and was started with $1.1 million in grant money won from the Knight News Challenge, an annual contest held by the Knight Foundation.

MSNBC.com is the news channel for Microsoft’s MSN portal, whose execs are very interested in weaving more local results into the site, as well as into the software giant’s new search offering, Bing.

The aim of having EveryBlock data integrated, for example, would be to create a local information dashboard on MSN.

Here’s a screen grab of EveryBlock’s take on my zip code in San Francisco, below (click on the image to make it larger)–and a video interview with Holovaty on YoChicago in early 2008:

Here’s someone who can take advantage of the new math: Sam Schwartz, who oversees strategy and M&A for Comcast’s (CMCSA) digital group. Schwartz has already guided the cable giant through a shopping spree during the past few years, and while he’s too cautious to say it with force, he’s clearly interested in bulking up some more. And unlike some of his peers, he could do it: “We’re ready for pitches,” he says.*

In the video below, Schwartz walks me through the logic of the deals he’s made to date, many of which–Fandango? Daily Candy? Plaxo–have been head-scratching to outsiders. Some of this makes a bit more sense now: Some of Plaxo’s technology, for instance, will be used to authenticate Comcast subs for its new Web video offering (see below).

And while he doesn’t spell this out specifically in our chat, I get the sense that future deals may be geared toward expanding Comcast’s overall Web audience, which means that sites that have lots of uniques but aren’t quite sure what to do with them may be logical targets. I’m just thinking outloud here, but sure seems like Yahoo (YHOO) and Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL have plenty of assets that fit that bill.

Schwartz also talked about Comcast’s approach to Web video and its plans to launch its “OnDemand Online” service this year. OnDemand Online is supposed to counter both Hulu and pirate Web sites by offering up a wealth of video you can’t already get–legally–on the Web, via Comcast’s Fancast site. The catch: You’ll have to be a Comcast subscriber to get it.

There are plenty of technology optimists who think these kinds of plans are the cable industry’s last gasp–an attempt to keep cable subscribers paying for a bundle of channels and shows they don’t want, instead of simply having them buy the stuff they do want à la carte. Schwartz, not surprisingly, disagrees, and he lays out his argument below.

*Note: An earlier version of this story and headline misquoted Schwartz. Apologies for my mistake.