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Industry News

        

Artificial Intelligence Startups Saw 302% Funding Jump in 2014
02/10/2015 – The $650M acquisition of DeepMind Technologies last January helped clarify for venture investors that there is money to be made in artificial intelligence investments.

And investors clearly gained interest in the hot AI space through 2014 pouring $309M into AI startups across more than 40 deals, according to CB Insights data prepared for Bloomberg Business.

On a year-over-year basis, funding to pure-play AI startups, which include companies working in NLP, machine learning, deep learning and predictive APIs among other core applications, jumped 302%. The most sizable deals included Sentient Technologies‘ $103.5M Series C financing from investors including Tata, Horizons Ventures and Access Industries and Vicarious Systems‘ $40M Series B led by Formation 8. ABB Technology Ventures later extended the round by another $12M.
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Arch Venture Raise $400 Million New Fund To Bet On "Wild Ideas"
08/26/2014 – It’s been 28 years since ARCH Venture Partners spun out of the University of Chicago in 1986, but the partners at the venture firm specialized in biotech are still going strong due to an investment strategy one of its own partners calls “a little crazy.”

Crazy has worked for ARCH historically, except for a bad patch in the late 1990s. And limited partners are trusting it will work again, as the firm announced Wed. it has closed its eighth investment fund, for more than $400 million.
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Bain Capital raises $650 million venture fund
06/18/2014 – Bain Capital has raised its sixth venture capital fund, closing it at $650 million, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The Boston firm, well known for its large private equity funds, also has venture capital portfolios, which invest in earlier-stage companies. Generally, the deal sizes run from $1 million to $50 million. Target industries include software, business services, and health care technology and services.


Bain Capital Ventures raised the new fund quickly, starting in April. Its last venture fund was raised in 2012 and totaled $600 million.
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Greycroft Closes $200M Early-Stage Growth Fund
06/19/2014 – Greycroft Partners, a New York firm that saw its early investments in Maker Studios, Buddy Media, Huffington Post and Braintree Payments Solutions turn into large payouts, has now closed on its first growth fund at $200 million.

Greycroft set out to raise its growth fund in late February with a target of $160 million and with a hard cap of $200 million.

The new fund means there is another expansion-stage investor in New York, which has few such firms. “So many of our companies are not in San Francisco and have a harder time tapping into these expansion-stage funds in the Valley,” Mr. Sigalow said.
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P2P Lending Startups Take More Than Twice As Much VC Funding As Crowdfunding Startups
02/14/2014 – While demand for both crowdfunding and P2P lending platforms has grown, funding dollars have primarily accrued to a small group of well-funded P2P lending platforms including Lending Club, Prosper Marketplace and Funding Circle.

Venture capital investors are playing a big role in the rise of alternative financial services – putting funding dollars toward both crowdfunding (equity, donation, reward etc.) as well as peer-to-peer lending platforms, matching individual borrowers and unrelated lenders or “peers.”

Demand for both crowdfunding and P2P lending platforms has grown but as the chart below highlights, P2P lending platforms have raised nearly $715M vs. $237M to crowdfunding platforms since 2009.
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General Solicitation Ban Lifted Today
09/23/2013 – It’s official- startups can now publicly advertise that they are seeking investments, but it does come with additional responsibilities of which all entrepreneurs must be aware.
Three Things You Must Know About It:


1. Allow only accredited investors into the funding round.
(you can have up to 35 non-accredited investors participating in your round as long you have a pre-existing relationship with them.)

2. Verify that all these investors are accredited.
you will be required to provide official documentation to confirm that each investor meets the accredited investor threshold, according to the SEC requirements.

3. Declare that a 506(c) publicly advertised offering was undertaken as part of the Form D filing.
Just as of today, you will have to file a Form D within 15 days of receiving your first investment. This means you will have to declare that you publicly advertised your offering, under new 506(c) regulations.
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Corporate VC deal activity jumped 23%
08/06/2013 – Corporate VC deal activity jumped 23% on a year-over-year (YoY) basis spurred by more CVCs doing deals and a small group of hyperactive corporate venture investors.

Q2’13 saw corporate VCs participate in 126 deals representing total funding of $1.7B. In addition to strong deal growth, corporate venture funding climbed 7% versus a year ago. Overall, corporate VCs are doing deals across all stages and sectors and are cutting much larger checks. In fact, deals in which CVCs participate are 60% larger than the typical VC deals. The recent quarter underscores the fact that CVCs are becoming an increasingly key constituency in the venture ecosystem with 25% of overall VC funding now including participation by CVCs. With traditional VCs having a tough time raising money from LPs, are corporate VCs stepping in to fill the gap?
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SEC to lift ban on general solicitation
07/14/2013 – After a year-long wait since the announcement of the JOBS Act in April 2012, the SEC finally made a much anticipated vote of 4-1 yesterday in favor of lifting the ban on general solicitation for Title II of the JOBS Act. This is exciting news for fundraising entrepreneurs with private companies.
Essentially, this means that startups and other private companies will be able to publicize that they are fundraising, instead of relying solely on word of mouth within their own personal networks of accredited investors with whom they have an existing relationship.
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Signia Venture forming $100M fund for mobile, gaming, ed-tech startups
06/04/2013 – Signia Venture Partners is raising a $100 million fund, according to an SEC filing.
Signia Venture Partners is an early stage fund that makes investments in mobile, gaming, online video, and education technology. It was formed by Playdom Inc founder Rick Thompson– who sold his company to Disney for $763.2 million in 2010– and fellow tech industry veterans Dan Fiden, Ed Cluss, and Sunny Dhillon in 2012. The group committed $20 million of their own money for the first fund and has made just shy of 30 investments to date.

Signia Venture Partners is based in Menlo Park, California. Thompson is a prolific tech investor. All told, Thompson has had exits valued in excess of $5 billion during his career. He loves to play poker and chess; he has been an investor and entrepreneur since 1995; and he is focused on what he calls the founder-investor model, where he gets closely involved with the early-stage companies he works with.
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SAP Ventures to Boost HANA Fund, Staff
05/18/2013 – SAP announce Thursday that it plans to increase the size of SAP Ventures’ $155 million HANA fund to $405 million as part of a broad effort to “define what a next-generation corporate venture capital organization looks like,” SAP Ventures Chief Executive Nino Marakovic told VentureWire. SAP is the sole LP in the SAP HANA Realtime Fund, which was launched by SAP Ventures in April, 2012 to invest in early-stage venture capital funds and in startups building technology around SAP’s HANA in-memory database.
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Forté Ventures launching $50M fund
05/15/2013 – Atlanta-based Forté Ventures plans to raise a $50 million fund, according to a Securities & Exchange Commission filing.
The fund, launched by former Arcapita Inc. partner Tom Hawkins, has raised $10 million so far.
Forté Ventures will invests in several tech sectors, including Information Technology, mobility, digital media, financial technology and industrial technology, Hawkins said. The fund will write checks of $100,000 to $3 million in each deal.
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Foundation Capital raises 7th funding of $282M
04/09/2013 – Foundation Capital announced its seventh fund today, a $282 million pool of money that the venture firm plans on investing in early-stage startups.
Monlo Park, Calif.-based Foundation Capital has handled a total of $2.7 billion since it was first founded 17 years ago. This firm primarily invests in early-stage companies and plans to focus this current fund on consumer technology, information technology, and clean technology.
Eight of the venture firm’s partners will invest from this funding, including Charles Moldow and Ashmeet Sidana who we chatted with last year about the state of venture capital and then unique relationship VCs have with each other. Moldow refers to it as “coopatition” a little cooperation and little competition mixed in together.
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Accelerator Ventures Raising $25M Fund II
02/21/2013 – San Francisco-based early stage investor Accelerator Ventures is seeking $25 million for a planned second fund, according to a securities filing.The filings lists Alexander Lloyd, Accerator’s founder and managing partner, as the sole general partner. Prior to founding the firm, Lloyd was a venture partner at Rustic Canyon Partners, where he oversaw development of their seed-stage investment strategy. Also on board at the firm are Ben Smith, a venture partner, and John Paul Milciunas, an entrepreneur-in-residence.
Accelerator has been making investments for about a decade, but did not close its first institutional fund, a $5.75 million Fund I, until 2008.
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2012 Venture Capital Activity Report
01/18/2013 – Venture capital for 2012 hit $28.3 billion invested across 3267 deals. Funding was down 7.5% and failed to reach the $30 billion mark seen in 2011 ($30.6B) while deal volume climbed 7% from 2011 on the back of continued strong activity at the Seed VC stage (from 3051 to 3267 deals). Q4 2012 saw VC funding dip for the 2nd consecutive quarter as it fell back significantly from the heady $8.1B seen two quarters ago in Q2 2012 and the $7.5B seen in Q3 2012. On the deal activity front, Q4 maintained the record-setting pace seen in Q3 ending at 834 financings (compared to 835 in Q3).
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New Atlantic Ventures launches new VC fund
01/02/2013 – Reston-based New Atlantic Ventures, which invests in technology start-ups, has launched its fourth venture capital fund.
The New Atlantic Venture Fund IV expects to raise $125 million, with its first investors contributing $42.5 million in the fund's initial sale last week.
New Atlantic Ventures currently holds stakes in more than two dozen start-ups, including six in the Washington area. It currently has $230 million in capital under management.
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Hospital-based Strategic Venture Funds To Spark Innovation
12/09/2012 – Healthcare providers are finding their “play it safe” culture isn’t conducive to breakthrough innovation. Facing the inevitable deflationary pressures being put upon the healthcare system, innovation is critically needed.
Health systems have taken various approaches such as becoming a Limited Partner in venture funds like Health Enterprise Partners. Some of the larger systems, such as HCA and Dignity Health, have their own venture arms. A new development is a much smaller organization establishing their own venture fund.
Implicit in this approach is a much more hands-on approach than as an investor in a 3rd party venture fund. Rex Health Ventures is an early example of venture-capital investment funds in the country started by a community, nonprofit hospital (Rex Health Care). The fund is being launched with an initial $10 million investment from Rex Healthcare and will help finance the most promising innovations among new medical services, tools and technologies.
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Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year
11/08/2012 – Google will increase the cash it allocates to its venture-capital arm to up to $300 million a year from $200 million, catapulting Google Ventures into the top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds.

Access to that sizeable checkbook means Google Ventures will be able to invest in more later-stage financing rounds, which tend to be in the tens of millions of dollars or more per investor.

It puts the firm on the same footing as more established corporate venture funds such as Intel's Intel Capital, which typically invests $300-$500 million a year.
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Vicarious Raised $15M Series A Funding for AI Research
10/21/2012 – Vicarious, an artificial intelligence research company, today announced a $15M Series A round of financing led by Good Ventures LLC, a for-profit investment firm founded by Facebook and Asana co-founder Dustin Moskovitz that will donate all of its earnings to the Good Ventures Foundation. Also participating in the round are veteran institutional investors Founders Fund and Open Field Capital, as well as Vicarious angel investors Steve Brown and Zarco Investment Group.
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Piilo presented at DEMO Africa
10/26/2012 – During the DEMO conference Piilo demonstrated its recently released platform to change the landscape for Human Resource Management for small and medium sized organizations.

CIO website reports: “The (Piilo) system is scalable and modular allowing the users to purchase single or several modules depending on their needs. Users can create their own customized portal that matches their businesses’ budget and needs by selecting one, two or more modules.”
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Saturn Partners raising $75M third VC fund
10/12/2012 – Boston-based Saturn Partners, an early backer of Constant Contact that has kept a low profile since its founding in 1993, plans to close its third venture capital fund by the end of the year as it seeks to become a better-known brand in VC, partner Bob Chicoski said in an interview.
The firm has raised $50 million for the new fund thus far — from investors including new limited partner Siemens (NYSE: SI) — and expects to close the fund at about $75 million, Chicoski said. That's up from up from the firm's $30 million second fund, he said.
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Gulf start-ups surge as venture capital floods in
09/15/2012 – Venture capital is flooding into the Middle East as a host of new funds set up shop, promising new hope for struggling start-ups seeking investment.
At least five new funds are in the process of scouring the Middle East for the next Facebook, Google or Aramex as investors clock on to the growing number of small businesses in dire need of funding.
The five funds - Beco Capital, Y+ Ventures, Smart Start, Envestors and Virtuvest - are looking to invest tens of millions of dollars in start-ups and small businesses in the next few years. Individual investments vary depending on the fund but could be anywhere between US$50,000 (Dh183,640) and $2 million
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Foundry Group raises third fund at $225 million
09/15/2012 – Foundry Group, the Colorado-based venture capital firm best known for its early investment in Zynga (ZNGA), has closed its third fund with $225 million in capital commitments.
That's the exact same size as Foundry's first two funds, and virtually the exact same LP base. In fact, expect that Foundry's upcoming announcement on the fund close will be a literal cut-and-paste job from the prior two announcements (save for the date and fund number).
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Nexus Venture Partners Closes $270M, Its Largest Fund Ever
09/06/2012 – Nexus Venture Partners, India’s most successful venture capital fund has announced the close of its third fund with committed capital of about $270 million. The fund investors include endowments, foundations and financial institutions across North America, India, Europe and Asia. Nexus plans to use the funds to continue helping Indian startups go global and vice-versa: help U.S. startups tap into emerging markets. Nexus Venture Partners was launched in 2006 with the primary goal of providing capital to exceptional Indian entrepreneurs
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Thrive Capital Raising $150 Million Venture Fund
08/10/2012 – Instagram-backer Thrive Capital is raising a new $150 million venture capital fund, people familiar with the matter said, a move that could put the young firm in greater competition with bigger peers that have been its partners in recent deals.

The fundraising effort underscores the rising ambition of Thrive Capital’s young founder Joshua Kushner, 27, who hails from a prominent real estate family. His firm was one of several that doubled their money practically overnight after it invested in photo-sharing service Instagram at a $500 million valuation just days before Facebook bought the company for $1 billion in cash and stock. The purchase price, however, has declined as Facebook’s stock has suffered recently.
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$300 Million Return On A $17 Million Startup Investment
07/24/2012 – VMware is buying Nicira Inc. for $1.26 billion in cash and equity, adding technology that helps networks run more efficiently to broaden its appeal to companies seeking to cut hardware costs.

The acquisition is netting the investor, Andreessen Horowitz, an estimated $300 million return on $17.7 million investment, paying back its entire 2009 fund.

Ever since Marc Andreessen formalized his startup investing by creating a firm, Andreessen Horowitz, back in 2009, the firm has been treated like one of Silicon Valley's top startup investors.
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Sequoia Capital raising $1B for new funds
06/03/2012 – Sequoia Capital, the venture capital firm behind companies such as Google and Yahoo, is raising new money for a number of different funds in the U.S. and China, that in aggregate would be around $1 billion.

Fortune is reporting these new funds may be used for a China-focused fund, growth equity for later stage companies, and traditional investing. The company closed its last round at the end of 2011 for its U.S. Growth Equity Fund V. The firm also raised around $1.3 billion for a number of similar funds in 2010.
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Renaissance Venture Capital Raises 2nd Fund, Passes $100 Million Mark
04/30/2012 – The Renaissance Venture Capital Fund, the venture capital fund-of-funds formed by Business Leaders for Michigan, Monday announced formation of a second fund with initial capital of $60 million, growing the RCVF to over $100 million.
When launched in 2008, the RCVF’s Renaissance I was the first fund of its kind in the United States. Its $45 million was invested in 10 venture capital funds from around the nation under the condition that they actively look at Michigan opportunities. The investments to date by RCVF have led to venture capital firm investments of 15 times that amount into Michigan companies and the creation of over 200 jobs.
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Firm NEA Raises $2.1 Billion for its 14th Venture Capital Fund
05/09/2012 – New Enterprise Associates has raised $2.08 billion for its 14th fund, well on its way to a total offering of $2.56 billion.

The Chevy Chase, Md. based venture capital juggernaut filed paperwork in March declaring at the time its intent to raise $2.3 billion. New paperwork indicates that NEA has attracted 146 investors.

The vote of confidence from its limited partners is no surprise given NEA's stalwart status among venture capital firms. Its committed capital is more than $11 billion across all of its funds, and Forbes recently named four NEA partners to its Midas List of Tech Investors.
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Relay Ventures launches $150M mobile fund
03/22/2012 – ATP Capital said Wednesday it is re-branding itself under the new name of Relay Ventures. The news comes as the company is commencing a new $150 million mobile fund, called the BlackBerry Partners Fund II. Independently managed, it is an early stage venture fund focused solely on mobile computing.
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Venture capital investments up 19 percent in 4Q
01/20/2012 – Funding for startups rose 19 percent in the fourth quarter as venture capitalists fueled money into more companies in the Internet, clean technology and other sectors.

According to a study released Friday, startup investments grew to $6.57 billion in the October-December quarter from $5.52 billion in the same period in 2010. The volume of deals, though, did not keep up with the amount of money invested. There were 844 deals completed in the fourth quarter, down from 861 a year earlier.

Called the MoneyTree report, the study was conducted by PriceWaterHouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association based on data from Thomson Reuters.
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Accel builds $100 million fund for big data startups
11/08/2011 – Accel Partners has backed some of the biggest online hits of the past few years, including Facebook, Groupon, and Angry Birds-maker Rovio. But with its new $100 million fund, the firm wants to invest in an area that's a little less sexy—"big data" startups.

Accel's Big Data Fund will inject needed capital into companies ranging from next generation storage and data management platforms to a wide range of revolutionary software applications. 
The venture firm made the announcement at the Hadoop World Conference in New York.
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Venture Capital veteran Perkins sees danger ahead
09/13/2011 – Tom Perkins, co-founder of Kleiner Perkins and the backer of companies ranging from Genentech to Google, believes much of the venture-capital industry has set itself up for failure.
"Mathematically, there's no way that all venture capital in America will make 10 to 1," or $10 for every dollar invested -- a fairly typical return in past years -- Perkins told Reuters.
There is too much money chasing too few companies, he said, and the increasingly large sums invested mean failures will hurt more.
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Freestyle Capital Receives $27 Million in Fund I Close.
09/12/2011 – Today, at TechCrunch Disrupt, the industry’s early-stage startup networking event, internet technology veterans Josh Felser and Dave Samuel formally introduced Freestyle Capital, a new venture capital firm focused on seed and early stage investments in consumer and web-based enterprise technology startups. Felser and Samuel, serial Internet entrepreneurs who together co-founded both Crackle (acquired by Sony for $65 million in 2006) and Spinner.com (acquired by AOL Time Warner for $320 million in 1999), also announced that they have raised $27 million in a new fund closed from limited partners including Cendana Capital and Hall Capital. The new fund builds on a pre-existing portfolio assembled by Felser and Samuel.
Freestyle Capital will focus on providing early-stage startups with both funding and counsel – drawing upon the investment capabilities and real-world experiences of Felser and Samuel – to guide technology startups to the next stage of development. Freestyle Capital is looking for young companies with transformational business ideas presenting seed funding and early stage investment opportunities in the range of $100,000-$500,000.
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New $300M Greentech Fund
07/19/2011 – Former First Solar CEO Michael Ahearn officially launched his $300 million greentech fund.
The firm says in a release Monday that it will focus mostly on early stage companies, with investments ranging from $100,000 to $25 million, and will look for startups across the energy, water, agriculture and waste industries. While Ahearn is still Chairman of First Solar, and was CEO until 2009, the thin-film solar panel giant isn’t involved in the new fund.
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Comcast creates new venture capital fund
05/26/2011 – Philadelphia-based media giant Comcast Corp., creates new entity called Comcast Ventures, which will manage about $750 million in investments.

The new fund, which unites former NBC parent General Electric Co.'s Peacock Equity Fund with Comcast Interactive Capital, intends to invest in "early to late-stage businesses that represent the next generation of entertainment, communications and digital technology," Comcast said.
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Venture Capital Investments Rise in Q1 2011
04/15/2011 – Funding to U.S. startups climbed during the first three months of the year, with venture capitalists putting more money into fewer companies, according to a study. Despite the decline in deals, the growth may indicate an improvement in the health of the venture investment market.

For the January-March period, startup investments rose 14 percent to $5.9 billion, compared with $5.2 billion invested during the same quarter in 2010, according to the study. In all, 736 startups received funding, which is down nearly 7 percent year over year and marks the smallest amount of companies to be funded since the third quarter of 2009.
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CDB Capital to launch $9 billion PE, venture capital fund
01/03/2011 – CDB Capital, a unit of China Development Bank, said on Monday that it will launch a 60 billion yuan ($9 billion) fund of funds to support the country's fledgling private equity and venture capital firms.
The fund of funds, the first of its kind set up by a state-owned entity, would include 40 billion yuan for private equity and 20 billion yuan for venture capital, they said.
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SEC takes aim at venture capital rules in 2011
01/02/2011 – New rules from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and a revised reading on which private fund managers must register as investment advisers will have a “profound” effect on traditional venture capital funds in 2011, a lawyer who specializes in VC litigation told me this week.
Under the new rules, even firms which are exempt from registration under the proposed rules will be still required to file periodic reports with the SEC and be subject to examination by the SEC.
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Atlanta’s H.I.G. BioVentures raising second $250M fund
12/16/2010 – H.I.G. BioVentures is raising a $250 million second venture fund, according to a regulatory filing.

H.I.G. BioVentures invests in companies developing innovative products for significant unmet medical needs in therapeutics, medical device technology, specialty pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. A natural extension of the broader H.I.G. Capital platform, H.I.G. BioVentures invests across a broad range of stages.
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Hon Hai sets up U.S. venture capital fund
12/18/2010 – Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. said Saturday it has set up a US$15 million offshore venture capital fund to invest in healthcare and biotechnology companies.

Hon Hai said in a statement the fund is called Burrage Capital Healthcare Offshore Fund II. It didn't give other details.

Hon Hai, which assembles Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) iPhone and iPad, is the world's largest contract maker of electronic products by revenue
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2010 a busy year for IPOs: 171 companies have filed
08/28/2010 – The pipeline of companies hoping to go public is filling, and that means investors may soon have more stocks to choose from — if they're interested.

So far this year, 171 companies have filed plans to go public. It's only August, but that already ranks this as the busiest year for initial public offering filings since 2007, says Renaissance Capital. There were 120 IPO filings in 2009 and 153 in 2008.
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ICICI Bank sets up $100 mn venture capital fund
06/10/2010 – The country's largest private sector lender, ICICI Bank, on Thursday said it has set up a $100 million dedicated venture capital fund for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and mid-market companies.

The "Emerging India Fund" is an ICICI group initiative to provide growth capital to Indian companies in the SME and mid-market segment, an ICICI Bank spokesperson said.

This is a $100 million fund to be managed by ICICI Investment Management Company Limited (IIMCL), a wholly owned subsidiary of ICICI Bank.
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Rembrandt Venture Partners Closes Second Fund
04/12/2010 – Rembrandt Venture Partners has closed a second fund (Rembrandt Venture Partners' Fund Two) in the amount of $160.5 million. It will be invested in early-stage companies with ground-breaking technology offerings. Rembrandt Venture Partners' Fund Two was oversubscribed, exceeding its initial target by $10.5 million.

Rembrandt has been a participant in several recent successes in the high tech space, like Cavium, Good Technologies (acquired by Motorola), Ironport (acquired by Cisco), LGC Wireless (acquired by ADC Communications), and MetaLINCS (founded by Rembrandt, acquired by Seagate).
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Venture fund raising shows signs of life in first quarter
04/07/2010 – Venture capital firms raised some $4.11 billion through the first three months of this year in a sign that a bit of a rebound may be underway.

Even though the total is less than funds raised in the last half of 2009, it was a big jump - 41 percent - over the first quarter of last year, according to new data from Dow Jones Venture Source.

Most of the money, $3.1 billion, went to 17 later stage funds.

Sixteen early stage funds also closed on new dollars, but the total was less than $1 billion.

2010 could produce an annual total exceeding the $13 billion of last year, but in 2008 venture firms raised nearly $29 billion.

Some 34 funds raised money, up from 25 a year earlier.

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NEA raises $2.5 billion venture fund
01/06/2010 – New Enterprise Associates closed NEA XIII, a $2.5 billion fund, bringing the firm's total committed capital to more than $11 billion.
NEA has been one of the most active VC firms in recent years, investing in over 650 companies since its founding in 1978. It’s had roughly 165 portfolio companies go public and about 265 get acquired. It’s also one of the few firms with offices in Washington, DC.
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Slight rise in venture capital investing foreseen for 2010
12/26/2009 – Venture capitalists expect a modest increase in investments and exit options in 2010, according to a recent report from the National Venture Capital Association.

The association surveyed more than 325 venture capitalists in the last month. Here are some of the findings for 2010:

• 44 percent forecast total U.S. investments of $21 billion to $25 billion.

• Half think more companies will receive venture financing.

• Clean technology (54 percent) and e-commerce (46 percent) will see the most money.

• The biggest investment declines are expected in the semiconductor industry (64 percent) and wireless (37 percent).

• 48 percent predict more foreign limited partners will invest in U.S. venture funds.
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China Moves Toward Allowing LP Fund Structure
12/03/2009 – The Chinese government made one step towards allowing foreign private equity and venture capital firms to raise funds that are structured as limited partnerships.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, promulgated a new rule this month that would allow foreign entities to invest in partnerships in China. Entitled Administrative Measures on Partnership Enterprises Established by Foreign Enterprises or Individuals, the rule allows foreign companies and individuals to form partnerships in China, either on their own or by teaming with Chinese entities.
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Norwest Venture Partners has raised $1.2 billion for new fund
11/26/2009 – Norwest Venture Partners has raised $1.2 billion for a new venture capital fund, an optimistic sign for technology start-ups. Norwest, which announced its new fund Wednesday, said it would use the fund in part to finance large investments in mature companies, which are typically not a focus of venture capitalists. This strategy, shared by some other firms, has provoked debate over the nature of venture finance.
The new Norwest fund, almost double the size of its last fund and one of the largest to be raised in recent years, provides more evidence of Silicon Valley’s newfound optimism, which has been fueled by recent sales and public offerings of venture-backed start-ups.
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The Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index of Q3 2009
11/14/2009 – The Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index for the third quarter of 2009, based on an October 2009 survey of 35 San Francisco Bay Area venture capitalists, registered 3.37 on a 5 point scale (with 5 indicating high confidence and 1 indicating low confidence.) This quarterly index reading stayed exactly constant from the previous reading of 3.37 and indicates a leveling off of confidence after rising the previous two consecutive quarters following a five-year low in confidence in Q4 2008.





The quarterly Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index (Bloomberg ticker symbol: USFSVVCI) is based on an on-going survey of San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley venture capitalists. The Index measures and reports the opinions of professional venture capitalists in their estimation of the high-growth venture entrepreneurial environment in the San Francisco Bay Area over the next 6 - 18 months.
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Infosys Co-Founder Adds Another $91 Million To Venture Fund
11/06/2009 – More good news for Indian entrepreneurs! Infosys co-founder and chairman N. R. Narayana Murthy’s new VC firm, now called Catamaran Venture Fund, just added a whole lot more money to its coffers.
The Catamaran Venture Fund will have a total of around $130 million dollars to invest with and will focus on early stage and angel investing. As we wrote in our past report, Murthy aims to invest mainly in ‘brilliant’ Indian entrepreneurs who found startups that operate in the areas of healthcare, education and nutrition, which may include technology-related companies.
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Greylock Partners Raises $575 Million Venture Fund
11/02/2009 – Silicon Valley venture capital firm Greylock Partners said Monday it has 575 million dollars in a new fund to back promising technology startups. Greylock also announced that LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman is a new investing partner in the firm.
Greylock XIII funds will be invested in young firms behind software, services, or infrastructure for business or consumer markets.
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GE launches $250M life sciences VC fund
10/25/2009 – General Electric has pulled the wraps off of a new, $250 million venture fund which will invest in new life sciences technologies.

Intrigued by the field's potential, GE says that its new "Healthymagination Fund" will back new diagnostic, information-technology and life-science technologies. The three primary focuses include "tools for research and development in biopharmaceuticals and stem cells, and technologies for manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals and vaccines."
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Texas Women Ventures Fund helps female entrepreneurs
10/02/2009 – So far, $4 million has been committed to the sidecar fund, which requires investors to put up at least $60,000, said Johns Martin, managing member of the Texas Women Ventures Fund. She hopes to finish fundraising by November.

The Boone Family Foundation is the lead investor, with a $1 million commitment, said Jim Adams, vice president of the foundation started by Container Store founder and chairman emeritus Garrett Boone and his wife, Cecilia.
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Venture Firm’s ‘Green’ Funds Top $1 Billion
08/30/2009 – Vinod Khosla, the prominent venture capitalist who has been investing hundreds of millions of his own dollars in green technology companies for the last several years, will now invest other people’s money, too. Khosla Ventures, the firm he founded in 2004 after leaving Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is announcing on Tuesday that it has raised $1.1 billion in two funds that will invest in green technology and information technology start-ups.
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Netscape co-founder raises $300M to make early bets on startups
07/13/2009 – It's fitting that Netscape cofounder and University of Illinois alum Marc Andreessen is pressing the refresh button on the beleaguered venture capital industry. A pioneer of the commercial Internet and a dot-com mega-millionaire, Andreessen recently raised a $300 million fund that takes an older school approach to investing in emerging technology companies. The fund is designed to make smaller bets on more startups.
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Trident to raise $400 million for India fund
06/07/2009 – US-based venture capital firm Trident Capital is planning to raise its next global fund worth between $350-400 million. The company said a significant focus of the new fund would be on India. This will be the firm’s seventh such global fund. It is at present investing out of its sixth fund worth $430 million.
Venetia Kontogouris, managing director of Trident Capital, told Financial Chronicle, “We hope India will be a big growth story for us.’’ The firm has recruited a venture person on ground in India, its first such initiative outside the US.
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NEA breaks $2B for its latest venture capital fund
05/02/2009 – New Enterprise Associates, Silicon Valley’s largest venture capital firm, has raised another $1 billion for its newest fund — its 13th — bumping the fund’s total size so far to $2.15 billion. That’s an impressive feat in today’s economic climate. The target for the fund is $2.5 billion, lowered from the $3 billion initially posed to the firm’s limited partners last year, reports VentureWire.
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Google forms $100 million venture fund
03/31/2009 – Google Inc is forming a $100 million fund to invest in early-stage start-up firms.

The fund, to be called Google Ventures, will be wholly owned by Google, but will operate as a separate entity and will seek investment opportunities to maximize returns rather than looking for investments that strictly fit with Google's strategic vision.

Rich Miner, a co-founder of Android smart phone software that Google acquired in 2005, and Bill Maris are the fund's two managing partners.
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TGap Ventures to launch a new $30 million venture fund
03/02/2009 – Amid the national economic downturn and financial crisis, TGap Ventures is zeroing in on raising $30 million for a new venture fund.

The Kalamazoo-based TGap Ventures recently received a $3 million investment commitment that it expects to close by early April. The investment from the Renaissance Venture Capital Fund, a Detroit-based "fund of funds," will lift fund raising for the TGap Venture Capital Fund II to nearly $20 million in firm commitments, General Partner Jack Ahrens said.

TGap has "some other investments lined up" and hopes to complete fund raising for the Venture Capital Fund II "very early" in the second quarter, Ahrens said.
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'Cleantech' attracts venture capital
02/06/2009 – Venture capital investments in “cleantech” reached record levels in 2008 with $4.7 billion raised in 186 financing rounds.

They posted a 68 percent increase in annual capital invested and a 5 percent increase in annual financing activity, according to a study released Tuesday.

The analysis by Ernst & Young LLP , based on data from Dow Jones Venture Source, showed that cleantech companies received $954 million from venture capitalists in the fourth quarter of 2008, significantly surpassing the $681 million invested in the same period in 2007 but lagging behind the record $1.7 billion invested in the third quarter of 2008.
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Another early-stage venture fund launching in Atlanta
02/03/2009 – CEO Ventures, formerly VC South, expects to close a fund in the second quarter and plans to invest up to $4 million in about one SaaS company a quarter, founder Michael Price told the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
Two other Atlanta-based funds, TechOperators and Buckhead Investment Partners, launched recently and will also target early-stage funding.
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$15M in life science grants available
01/01/2009 – Starting Jan. 1, private biotechnology companies can apply for public funds through the state’s Life Sciences initiative. The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center is looking for applicant companies that will create jobs, contribute to the scientific base of knowledge in the Commonwealth and improve the quality of life for citizens. State officials will also give consideration to the geographic distribution of grants around the state.
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IPO Activity Will Be on Hold until 2011
12/19/2008 – Mass High Tech, The Journal of New England Technology, reports in today’s edition that the region’s venture capitalists expect the market for initial public offerings of technology company stock to be frozen until at least 2011 because of the ongoing global economic crisis and instability in the stock market.
Mass High Tech has also reported that companies that had filed plans with federal regulators for IPOs have begun to cancel those plans. Through in-depth interviews with more than a dozen key New England venture capitalists, Mass High Tech journalists reported that investors should expect almost no IPOs in 2009 and 2010.
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Venture capital survey: Funding down, but still flowing
11/09/2008 – For the first time ever, clean-tech investments nationwide cracked the $1 billion mark in a single quarter, and biotech investments were also up.

But overall, venture capital investments slipped 7 percent in the third quarter of 2008, with $7.1 billion going into 907 deals compared with $7.7 billion into 1,033 deals in the previous quarter. Investments in Silicon Valley were similarly down, with $2.77 billion going into 297 deals compared with $3.1 billion going into 318 deals in the previous quarter.
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Venture Capital Performance Declines Slightly as of Second Quarter 2008
10/27/2008 – he one-year all venture private equity performance index (PEPI) showed the greatest change from the first quarter 2008, with an 8.2 point decrease to 5.1% in second quarter 2008. Historically, short-term horizons show significant fluctuations quarter over quarter based on current exit market conditions. The closed IPO window in the second quarter did drive lower one-year return numbers overall. The next largest consecutive quarterly change occurred in the three-year time horizon where all venture PEPI decreased by 1.1 points quarter-over-quarter. Five-year and ten-year performance also posted modest declines from the previous quarter, decreasing .2 and .6 percentage points, respectively. Twenty-year performance figures showed a small quarter-over quarter increase to 16.9% from 16.8% in the first quarter.
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VC-backed public offerings hit 30-year low
10/06/2008 – A major slowdown in the IPO market is affecting the tech industry, potentially making it harder for start-ups to gain investments, experts at Pricewaterhouse Coopers say.

There were zero venture capital-backed IPOs in the second quarter of 2008, the first time that’s happened in 30 years, according to a report titled “The Exit Slowdown and the New Venture Capital Landscape.” By contrast, there were five venture capital-backed IPOs in the previous quarter, and 43 in the first half of 2007.
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JVP raises $100m toward fifth fund
10/05/2008 – Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) has made its return to the local venture capital industry. The fund announced today that it had made the first closing of its fifth fund on $100 million. The fund, which has a target of $150 million, will be earmarked for investment in media ventures. The first closing of the new fund brings the total funds managed by JVP to $770 million. JVP has a track record in raising funds at times of crisis. It raised its fourth fund in 2001 at the height of the previous crisis.
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HCL follows Future Group, plans $1 bn venture fund
09/12/2008 – Shiv Nadar-promoted HCL Enterprise, which owns HCL Technologies and HCL Infosystems, is planning to form a venture capital (VC) arm and tap the bourses to raise close to $1 billion (Rs 4,500 crore) through an initial public offer (IPO).
The venture, on the lines of Kishore Biyani’s Future Ventures India, will focus its investments in the information technology sector, said a source familiar with the development.
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Novamente featured in VentureBeat
08/05/2008 – Nintendogs for the DS was a brilliant game. Its premise — pick a puppy and nurture it to adulthood — played on the digital pet theme that has driven high sales from Tamagotchi to Pikachu, and let you teach your dogs fancy tricks and skills that would improve over time, almost like it was learning.

But it wasn’t. A Nintendog’s behaviors were scripted, its personality restricted to a handful of breeds. On the other hand, Novamente, a company that aims eventually to develop a super-smart artificial intelligence (AI), says that its current technology will make such limitations remnants of the past.
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Google VC fund could come at good time for tech
07/31/2008 – Investing is all about timing. And Google Inc.'s possible plans, reported in The Wall Street Journal, to start up a venture capital arm seem to be at an excellent point for early stage investing, coming as some funding is drying up in Silicon Valley.

This is a bit of an exaggeration, but the signs are there of a slow down in venture funding, especially at the early stage level. New start-up companies are starting to have a tougher time getting funding. According to the National Venture Capital Association, the dollar value of first-time deals fell 12% in the second quarter, versus a year ago.
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Longitude Capital Closes $325 Million Life Sciences Fund
07/08/2008 – Longitude Capital today announced the closing of its first investment vehicle, Longitude Venture Partners, L.P. (the "Fund"), a $325 million venture capital fund dedicated to life sciences investments. The Fund exceeded its target of $250 million.

The team at Longitude Capital includes: Managing Directors Juliet Tammenoms Bakker, Patrick Enright and Marc-Henri Galletti, Venture Partner Jeffrey Gold, Principals Douglas Foster and David Hirsch, and CFO Elaine Erickson. The firm was formed following the team's spin-out from Pequot Capital, where they were responsible for venture capital investments in life sciences companies since 1997.
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Sun Apollo ventures limited announces closing of $630 Million fund
07/24/2008 – SUN-Apollo Ventures Limited has announced the closing of the $630 million SUN-Apollo India Real Estate Fund LLC, which will pursue real estate development and investment opportunities in India. SUN-Apollo Ventures is a joint venture between the SUN Group, a leading Indian business and investment group principally owned by the Khemka family with operations predominantly focused on India and the countries of the Former Soviet Union (”FSU”), and Apollo Real Estate Advisors, one of the most active global real estate investors and fund managers.
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Ontario unveils $205-million venture fund
06/12/2008 – The new Ontario Venture Capital Fund, which has raised $205 million from six different partners, has named a fund manager and is throwing open its doors.

TD Capital Private Equity Investors, whose group already manages a $400-million venture and small-cap buyout portfolio for the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, will manage the new fund.
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4th Madrona fund raises $250 million in venture capital
06/11/2008 – Madrona Venture Group has raised a $250 million venture fund, the largest in the 13-year history of the Seattle venture capital firm.
The speed at which the firm raised the new cash -- less than four months -- and the commitment from existing investors -- Kauffman Foundation, University of Washington and others reupped -- speaks to Madrona's recent success.

Managing director Matt McIlwain noted that among Madrona-backed companies, four were sold and one went public in the past 18 months.
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Hunt Ventures closes on 140 million fund
05/28/2008 – Hunt Ventures today announced the formation of Hunt Ventures Fund I, L.P., which includes a significant capital commitment from an unaffiliated institutional investor.

Total partnership size is $140 million, of which a portion relates to existing Hunt Ventures portfolio companies with the remainder available for new and follow-on investments.
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Lightspeed Venture closed a new $800 million investment fund
05/13/2008 – Lightspeed Venture Partners, flexing its success in the ongoing shakeout of venture capital business, announced Monday it had closed a new $800 million investment fund.

Issuing press releases in English, Mandarin, Hindi and Hebrew - a reflection of Lightspeed's global reach - the Menlo Park firm said it had exceeded the $675 million target because of strong demand from limited partners.

Lightspeed has consistently performed in the top quartile of venture firms since it was founded in 2000, said Ravi Mhatre, a co-founder and managing director of the firm. Lightspeed, he said, could have easily raised more but decided that $800 million was the most that could be effectively managed.
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Cognitive Code in top 10 list of net technologies!
03/29/2008 – We are pleased to see that one of the tech industry pundits decided to list Cognitive Code in his top ten list of net technologies!
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Novamente presented Virtual pets at Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Conference
03/28/2008 – Novamente, a company in Washington DC which built the AI program that controls a Virtual dog, says that the demonstration is a foretaste not just of future virtual pets but of computer games to come. Their work, along with similar programs from other researchers, was presented at the First Conference on Artificial General Intelligence at the University of Memphis in Tennessee.
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CMEA Ventures raises $400M in seventh fund
03/23/2008 – CMEA Ventures said Thursday that it closed its largest fund ever, having raised $400 million for its seventh fund. The firm will continue to look for opportunities in energy and materials, information technology, and biology companies.

"The great challenge in venture capital today is finding truly disruptive opportunities," said Jim Watson, managing director of CMEA. "We strongly believe that among the best and most interesting investments are those with a great team and very complex technology across various disciplines and markets."
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Biotechnology Companies Raise Record Venture Capital in 2007
01/20/2008 – Venture capitalists pumped a record $9.1 billion into privately held U.S. biotechnology and medical device companies last year, in hopes of making discoveries they can sell to larger drugmakers.

Biotechnology and medical device companies raised 20 percent more cash in the U.S. last year than in 2006, according to a report by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. More than 4,000 biotechnology companies manipulate genes and cells to develop drugs for diseases including cancer, and arthritis.
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Arch Venture Partners closes its seventh fund at $400 million
12/11/2007 – Arch Venture Partners put the finishing touches on its seventh fund, a $400 million vehicle that gives the seed and early-stage investment firm about $1.5 billion under management. ARCH Venture Fund VII LP will continue the firm's focus on newly-minted companies in the biotechnology, advanced materials and specialty semiconductor sectors.
Chicago-based Arch likes to back startups that are commercializing technology coming out of universities, national laboratories, and corporate research laboratories. Its roots go back to 1986, when it spun off from an innovative technology commercialization initiative originated by The University of Chicago.
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PE Firms Set Fundraising Record of $263 billion this year
11/08/2007 – U.S. private equity firms have passed the $263 billion fundraising mark this year, besting the $258 billion record set last year with more than six weeks left in the year.
The ability of private equity firms to continue to raise billions of dollars, even as the buyout industry has begun to struggle to invest capital, demonstrates sustained investor confidence in the industry.
PE firms - including buyout, venture capital, funds of funds, mezzanine and other operations _ had closed 364 funds as of Nov. 7, down from the 403 funds closed last year, according to Dow Jones & Co. publication Private Equity Analyst.
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SoftTechVC Launches $12 Million Venture Fund
09/22/2007 – SoftTech VC just announced a new $12 million early stage venture fund today at the TechCrunch40 conference. The new fund will be called SoftTech VC II.

SoftTech VC, has been actively investing in startups over the last few years and has had notable successes such as Truveo (acquired by AOL for a rumored $50 million), Userplane (acquired by AOL for a rumored $35 million), MyBlogLog (acquired by Yahoo for $10 million), Kaboodle (acquired by Hearst for a rumored $30-40 million), Mayas Mom (acquired by BabyCenter for $7 million), Dogster, Kongregate, Edgeio and many others.
The firm most recently formed a $12M seed fund that will also focus on the consumer Internet space, aiming at investing in 30 to 40 companies over the next 3 years.
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Record Deal Sizes Push European VC Investment to €1.14B in 2nd Quarter
09/05/2007 – European venture capital investment climbed to €1.14B in the second quarter, despite a decreased deal flow of 213. The 5% increase in amount invested over 1Q07, despite a 20% drop in deal flow, is primarily due to increased deal sizes in early-stage investments. Year-over-year, investment was up and deals were down in nearly every industry, the report found, with healthcare companies seeing the biggest change, raising 10% more capital (€290 million v. €265 million) in 34% fewer deals (41 v. 62) than in the second quarter of 2006.
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Venture capital deals rose 6.1% in Q2-2007
08/10/2007 – With early-stage investments showing new strength during the second quarter, venture capitalists reported the largest number of deals since 2001. There were 977 deals, up 15.6% from the 856 funded in the first quarter of this year and up 6.1% from the 920 deals funded during the second quarter of 2006.

Venture capitalists invested $7.12 billion during the recent second quarter, according to statistics released last week by the National Venture Capital Association of Arlington, Va., PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP of New York and Thomson Financial, a New York unit of Stamford, Conn.-based Thomson Corp. The investments represented a 2.5% increase from the $6.9 billion invested during the second quarter of 2006, but a drop of 4.1% from the $7.43 billion invested in this year’s first quarter.
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AI company, Novamente, partners with Electric Sheep
06/07/2007 – AI company, Novamente, partners with Electric Sheep Company, the largest company in the world dedicated to designing experiences and delivering add-on software for 3D worlds, such as Second Life. During the upcoming Virtual Worlds Conference in San Jose, CA, Novamente CEO, Dr. Ben Goertzel plans to unveil a groundbreaking application utilizing Novamente AI in Second Life. At Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA, Dr. Goertzel presented a talk entitled, "Artificial General Intelligence: Now Is the Time", explaining a ten-year road map for reaching human-level Artificial Intelligence.
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Lehman Brothers raises another VC fund
05/30/2007 – Lehman Brothers has raised a $300M venture capital fund as the firm continues to grow its private equity business.
The fund is the same size as Lehman’s last VC fund, which was raised in 2003, according to the firm.
Lehman’s roots in venture capital go back to 1995, when it first started a technology venture capital effort.
Since then the firm has racked up investments in 70 companies in the software, semiconductor, electronic and communications equipment sectors, and generally invests $8m to $12m in each company.
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Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) closes new $600M fund
05/17/2007 – The Menlo Park-based firm said the new fund brings its committed capital to more than $2.2 billion, and is the largest fund raised in IVP's 26-year history.
The fund will continue IVP's strategy of investing in rapidly growing later-stage technology companies in the U.S. and will focus on three target sectors: communications and wireless, Internet and digital media, and enterprise IT companies.
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Milestone Venture Partners Raises $50 Million Fund
05/15/2007 – Milestone Venture Partners (http://www.milestonevp.com/), a New York city-based, early stage venture fund, today announced it has raised $50 million across two closings for Milestone Venture Partners III LP and its affiliates.
Milestone will continue to invest in technology-enhanced service businesses in the greater New York metropolitan area. The firm seeks business plans from entrepreneurial companies with unique offerings, marquee customers and proven
management.
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VC Investment Increases 8% to $6.96 Billion in First Quarter of 2007
04/23/2007 – Venture capital investment into U.S. headquartered companies climbed 8% in the first quarter of 2007 compared to the same period last year to reach $6.96 billion, according to the Quarterly Venture Capital Report released today by Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young LLP. The report showed that deal count reached 584 deals for the quarter, down by 31 deals from the first quarter of 2006.
Coming off a five-year high for both deals and investment in 2006, the report indicated that momentum for the venture capital market is continuing in 2007. The notable trends in the first quarter include a significant level of early-stage activity with investors financing proportionally more seed- and first-round deals and dramatically increasing investing in life sciences. In fact, the $2.88 billion invested in healthcare companies in the first quarter was the highest investment level on record.
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Kaloptics Raises $1.5M From Angle Technology
03/09/2007 – Angle Technology Ventures is creating a new imaging software company called Kaloptics with technology from New York University.
The venture capital firm licenses technology from research institutions, as it did from NYU for Kaloptics, and typically invests from $500,000 to $2 million to create a company that commercializes the research.
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O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures Closes $51 Million Fund
03/02/2007 – San Francisco, CA - O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV) today announced the closing of its initial $51 million fund. The fund will focus on seed and early-stage investments that leverage partner O'Reilly Media, Inc.'s previous investments and relationships with the technology early adopters they have dubbed the "alpha geeks." The fund's Managing Directors include Mark P. Jacobsen and Bryce T. Roberts. Said Roberts of the fundraising, "We were very pleased with the reception we received from the LP community. Our differentiated story and properly aligned fund size attracted a stable of very influential individual and institutional investors."
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Imagekind.com Raises $2.6M To Sell Original Art Online
02/26/2007 – Imagekind.com, a Web site where artists can sell their works online, said it's raised $2.6 million in Series A financing.
The Seattle company also said that former Expedia Inc. CEO Erik Blachford participated in the investment round and has been named an adviser to the company.
Leading the financing round was Holtzbrink Ventures of Germany. Also participating was Tom Hughes, a co-founder of Seattle-based Getty Images Inc.
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OVP Venture Partners Closes Seventh Fund At $250M
02/17/2007 – Early-stage venture capital firm OVP Venture Partners (OVP) has announced a final close on its seventh fund at $250 million, well exceeding its target of $200 million and at its self-imposed hard cap. After a first close of $207 million in May 2006, OVP accepted additional investments from two limited partners, the Meketa Investment Group in Westwood, MA, and the endowment of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. OVP now has over $750 million in capital under management.
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Canaan Partners Invests $7M in MINO Wireless
02/15/2007 – MINO Wireless, a Sunnyvale, CA-based company that provides voice-over-IP solutions for mobile and wireless communication, today announced it has received $7M in funding from the venture capital firm Canaan Partners. MINO’s technology makes international calling from mobile phones easy, convenient, and affordable by routing calls via existing internet connections found on mobile phones.
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ActoGenix Raises 11.5 Million Euro's In Series A Stock Financing
02/07/2007 – ActoGeniX has closed a €20m first round of financing led by GIMV and Life Science Partners. ActoGeniX raised the €11.5m first tranche of its funding from GIMV, LSP and Biotech Fund Flanders in 2006.
It has now raised an additional €8.5m from Aescap, Ventech, Baekeland Fund and Biotech Fund Flanders. ActoGeniX was set up in 2006 to develop its proprietary TopAct platform, a delivery system based on living non-pathogenic micro-organisms for the oral administration of therapeutic proteins and peptides.
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N2N Receives $30M To Power Victoria's Secret website
02/02/2007 – Cambridge-based n2N Commerce Inc. reports closing on a $30 million series A round of financing, which company officials say is one of the software industry's largest first-round investments since 2003.

Investors are General Catalyst Partners, a Cambridge venture capital firm, and Ohio-based Limited Brands Inc., which operates 3,545 specialty stores, including Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, Express, Limited Stores and other retail brands.
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Marketing Service Provider Genius.com Raises $10M
01/18/2007 – Marketing company Genius.com said Thursday it raised $10 million in its second venture funding round. MDV-Mohr Davidow Ventures led the round, and Nancy Schoendorf, a general partner there, took a seat on Genius' board of directors.
Emergence Capital Partners and Walden International, both previous investors, gave money in this round, too. The San Mateo company makes software that tracks people's web site behavior for use in selling.
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EBay To Buy Ticket Reseller StubHub For $310M
01/11/2007 – EBay Inc. is buying rapidly growing online ticket broker StubHub Inc. for $310 million in cash, further expanding the Internet auctioneer's electronic bazaar.
The San Jose-based company announced the deal late Wednesday after the news had already been leaked to the media.
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UK's HgCapital Raises $395M For Renewable Power Fund
01/02/2007 – UK private shop HgCapital said it has raised 300 million Euros ($395 million) for a fund earmarked to finance renewable power projects across Europe, Dow Jones reports. Backers of the fund include Dutch pension fund PGGM and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System. Portfolio companies in the Renewable Power Partners Fund include Wind Direct, developer of wind farms in the U.K. www.hgcapital.com
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Southern Capitol Ventures Closes $15M Second Fund
12/29/2006 – Southern Capitol Ventures has closed on its second fund—oversubscribed at $15 million—and is actively looking for deals.
The Raleigh-based firm, which launched in 2003 with a first fund of $4.5 million, landed its first institutional investor (Square 1 Bank of Durham) as well as Jim Goodmon, chief executive officer of Capitol Broadcasting for its new fund. (Capitol is the parent company of WRAL Local Tech Wire.)
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PixSense Secures $5.4M for Mobile Photo & Video Management Solution
12/18/2006 – PixSense announced today that it has secured $5.4 million in equity funding, led by ATA Ventures and Innovacom. PixSense will use the funding to accelerate product development, service deployments, and increasing partnerships with mobile carriers worldwide.
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RemoteReality gets $7.3M in funding for 360-degree video surveillance
12/18/2006 – RemoteReality Inc. has landed its first round of private funding and added a new CEO to help bring its 360-degree video camera and tracking software to the commercial security and enterprise markets, officials report.
The $7.3 million round was co-led by Battelle Ventures LP of New Jersey and Chart Venture Partners of New York. Battelle Ventures' affiliate fund, Innovation Valley Partners, also participated in the round for the startup, based in Westborough.
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BitTorrent Downloads $20M for Web content delivery
12/01/2006 – Web content delivery startup BitTorrent ended perhaps its best week ever with an announcement Friday that it scored $20 million in its second round of funding, which it plans to use to raise its profile as a leading brand in the content distribution market.
On Wednesday, two-year-old BitTorrent said it had signed Internet distribution deals with about eight film studios and TV networks, and was on its way to establishing itself as a service that drives other web sites that frequently move large files, ŕ la “Intel Inside” (see BitTorrent Hooks Big Studios).
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SeeSaw secures $10M funding from Sutter Hill Ventures
11/16/2006 – SeeSaw Networks, a leading out-of-home digital media company, today announced it has closed $10 million Series A financing from Sutter Hill Ventures. As the sole institutional investor in SeeSaw Networks, Sutter Hill Ventures holds two positions on the board of directors for Tench Coxe and Jim Gaither, both managing directors at the firm.
Seesaw Networks is the only out-of-home digital media company that makes it easy to plan, buy and measure advertising on the world’s most extensive network of digital venues. Unlike static billboards and posters, digital media can present constantly changing, computer-generated, full-motion video, photo-realistic graphics, text and animation, engaging people on the go.
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Edgeio Closes $5 Million Series A Financing for Web 2.0 classifieds
10/26/2006 – Edgeio corporation, a leader in online listings announced today that it has raised $5 million in the first close of a Series A round of financing. The round was led by Intel Capital and also included an investment from Transcosmos Investments and Business Development Inc, a Japanese public company with a Silicon Valley investment arm focused on Internet-based U.S. technology companies expanding into the Japanese marketplace. Investors in the company’s angel funding had their investment converted into A round stock. These include Ron Conway, Jeff Clavier, Claudio Chiuchiarelli, Frank Caufield Jr., RSS Investors, Millenium Technology Ventures, Michael Tanne, Auren Hoffman, Sam Perry, Bill McCabe and Louis Monier.
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Yahoo Invests $45 Million in online ad marketplace Right Media Inc.
10/18/2006 – With Yahoo scheduling the full launch of its advertising platform for early 2007, the company’s deal to grab a chunk of Right Media seems to come at an ideal time. Not only will this give Right Media a solid opportunity to integrate its Right Media Exchange into Yahoo’s new advertising game plan, but on the flip side, Yahoo gets another opportunity to extend its advertising platform and overcome the image that Panama could just be “rebranded Google.”
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Voxant Raises $10.5M For News Syndication Platform
09/22/2006 – Voxant, creator of the Viral Syndication Network™ for online news, has secured $10.5 million in backing for the company's unique solution for distributing broadcast, print and other types of news content across the Internet.
Voxant, which partners with major broadcasters and news organizations, today announced that SoftBank Capital of Boston and Court Square Ventures of Charlottesville, Va., have invested in its second funding round. They join Longworth Venture Partners of Boston, which provided Voxant’s initial funding and participated in this round with an additional investment.
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Home networking startup Enure lands $8M
09/12/2006 – Newton-based Enure Networks Inc., a maker of home and small home office network installation, configuration and management technologies, has landed its first round of funding, worth $8 million. The Series A round was led by Elron Electronic Industries Ltd., with additional participation from Carmel Ventures.
The company was originally founded in Israel in 2003 as Gaia bsm by Vice President of Marketing David Sayag and VP of technologies Israela Blat, both former executives at Sheer Networks Inc. and Marlborough's 3Com Corp. The company aims to help owners of complex home networks install, maintain and manage new IP services such as VoIP, IPTV, and Internet access. The technology will be deployed through service providers.
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Oil Exploration Imaging Company MicroSeismic Raises $7M
08/28/2006 – MicroSeismic has raised $7 million in a second equity round, underlining investor interest in finding oil more easily as oil prices remain above $70 per barrel.
The company has a 3D seismic imaging technology to better find and produce hydrocarbon resources.
Altira Technology Fund IV led the round. Other investors included RockPort Capital Partners and CTTV Investments, the venture capital arm of Chevron Technology Ventures.
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De Novo Ventures Closes $300M Life Science Fund
08/22/2006 – Menlo Park, California-based venture capital firm De Novo Ventures has closed its third venture fund, De Novo Ventures III, on $300m. The new fund will invest in medical device and in biotech companies with initial human clinical experience.
Fred Dotzler, a founder and managing director of De Novo Ventures, said, 'De Novo Ventures III builds upon the successful investment strategy of our first two funds.
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EMinor Raises $2M Series A For Online Music Community
08/18/2006 – A Triangle software firm with a focus on music has reeled in $2 million in series A funding.

Durham-based eMinor said that it has closed its first institutional round of financing and that it plans to use the money to expand marketing efforts for the release of its flagship product, ReverbNation, this fall. ReverbNation is a set of online tools that allow musicians and independent bands, labels and venues to network among each other and with fans.
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Desktop Travel Agent Portaga Raises $5.8M To Back Travel System
08/14/2006 – Having done more than a few travel expense reports and ticket booking for Interent start-ups, we can appreciate what Portaga is up to - it isn't going to be easy.
Portaga out of White Plains, NY closed Series A at $5.8M. The financing was led by the Ascend Venture Group with First Round Capital, Cove Harbor Partners and other investors. TripSync is a version of the Portaga desktop travel agent application that allows travelers to search for, book and schedule air, hotel, and car using Microsoft Outlook.
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Altra Inc. gets more than $120M for Renewable Fuel
08/01/2006 – Altra Inc., a Los Angeles renewable fuel projects developer, has raised more than $120 million in a second round of equity funding, the company said Tuesday.
The company completed its initial equity funding in April 2006 and has raised or is completing the placement of more than $250 million in equity and debt financing. Second round funding will be used to fund Altra's current projects, which include acquiring existing operating assets and developing stragetic sites of biofuel refining technology as it seeks to build 500 million gallons a year in biofuel production capacity.
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Limelight Networks Announces $130 Million Investment
07/27/2006 – Limelight Networks, Inc., the world's leading content delivery network for digital media, today announced the completion of a $130 million equity financing round led by Goldman Sachs Capital Partners. As part of the financing, representatives from Goldman Sachs will join the company's board of directors.
"Consumer demand for rich media delivered over the Internet -- video, music, games, and social media content -- has exploded over the past few years. This financing round, our first significant external equity financing, sets the stage for Limelight to continue expanding its infrastructure and capabilities to meet mounting market demand," said Bill Rinehart, President and CEO of Limelight Networks. "Goldman Sachs brings a depth of experience with high growth technology companies to their role as an investor in our company and a partner for the future."
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Greylock Partners raises $150M for Israeli investments
07/17/2006 – Greylock Partners said on Monday it has closed a $150 million dedicated fund which will invest in Israeli related early-stage technology companies.
Greylock Partners of Waltham, which had invested in eight Israeli companies through previous funds, said its new Greylock Israel fund, closed June 30, is its first dedicated exclusively to investments in Israel, a global center for technology innovation. Other venture capital firms, like Benchmark Capital and Sequoia Capital of Silicon Valley, also have made extensive investments and based partners in Israel.
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Cellfire Raises $10M for Mobile Coupon
07/11/2006 – San Jose-based Cellfire said funding was led by Menlo Park-based Menlo Ventures, and will be used to drive continued growth of the company's mobile coupon service in the mobile marketing arena. Launched initially in December 2005 to a controlled user base in California, Cellfire released its national service in June 2006.
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Tyzx, 3D video company, rides video wave, raises $4M
07/06/2006 – Tyzx, a Menlo Park company that specializes in three-dimensional video cameras, launched with great fanfare in 2002, when its technology was leaked to the New York Times.
Four years later, the company is still refining its technology and trying to break into the market. It has just raised $4 million in venture capital from Tekata, a global auto parts giant, and says it is involved in some top-secret homeland security projects.
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Mobile Marketing Co. Mozes Raised $750K Seed Round
07/03/2006 – Mozes, a Palo Alto start-up that lets you send it an SMS (text message) to get information about a person, a band or other product, has raised an angel round of $750,000. Media analyst Paul Kagan is among the investors.
It is the latest move by a start-up to exploit SMS' growing popularity, especially among youth, to help companies like Microsoft market their products.
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Sequoia Leads $6M Round In Paper Doll Site Stardoll.com
06/27/2006 – Stardoll, a social site that helps young girls create paper dolls of celebrities, has landed a $6 million investment from Sequoia. Unlike most Silicon Valley investments, Stardoll (formerly Paperdoll Heaven) isn’t a cutting-edge Web 2.0 startup - it’s a simple social network that enables 7 to 17 year old girls to create, share and discuss paper dolls. Surprisingly, the site has been a big hit - it attracts 1.2 million unique visitors a week from over 200 countries. Stardoll makes money by charging for “Superstar” membership - this costs $2.85 per month and gives users access to exclusive dolls.
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ClassifEye Ltd. has secured $1.2M for mobile security
06/19/2006 – ClassifEye Ltd. has secured a $1.2M equity investment from Nobska Ventures, a Baltimore, MD based venture capital firm. ClassifEye's software-only technology enables fingerprint authentication and identification using existing camera phones, for handset security, authentication and non-repudiation of financial transactions, and other identity management applications.
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Gusto Raised $4 Million for Newly Launched Travel Web
06/08/2006 – Gusto LLC, a new community-based travel Web site that connects travelers with each other and with relevant travel information, today announced that the company has finalized $4 million in venture capital financing, with $3 million from DHST, L.L.C., a venture group founded by William H. Darr, and the conversion of $1 million initial funding from Jeff Wasson, Gusto's CEO.
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Juice Wireless received $3.5 million for wireless content distribution
06/06/2006 – Juice Wireless said Monday it received $3.5 million in a third round of funding led by 21Ventures.
The company received about $500,000 in two previous rounds of funding over the past year and a half from New York City-based 21Ventures, bringing the total to $4 million. A private investor and a strategic investor joined in the third round.
The wireless application developer has created mobile marketing campaigns for several major brands. It also has a product called JuiceCaster that allows users and businesses to create, distribute, and access multimedia content from computers and portable devices.
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Online Real Estate Firm Redfin Raises $8M
06/01/2006 – Online real estate broker Redfin, a Seattle startup that wants to grab business from traditional real estate agents, has raised $8 million in new venture capital to fund its expansion into the San Francisco Bay area and develop new Web site features.
Vulcan Capital, the investment arm of Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc., led the financing round. Other investors were BEV Capital of Stamford, Conn., The Hillman Company of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Redfin's original venture investor, Seattle's Madrona Venture Group.
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Microsoft to buy SSL VPN vendor Whale Communications
05/18/2006 – Microsoft has agreed to acquire Whale Communications, a specialist in secure remote access and Web application firewalls.
The takeover is meant to broaden Microsoft's security offerings and give its customers more options in providing secure access to their networks from more locations and devices, Microsoft said in a statement Thursday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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Photo and video hosting site Photobucket Raises $10.5M
05/16/2006 – Palo Alto-based Photobucket has raised $10.5M from Trinity Ventures, the firm said today. PhotoBucket provides an online web site that allows people to upload and share photos, slideshows, video, and images. Photobucket's web site is used by people who want to post their media and link them to MySpace, Blogger, Neopets, and eBay. The company said it would use the funding to further accelerate market share gains and revenue growth.
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Goldman Sachs invested $30M in Iogen for renewable cellulose ethanol
05/02/2006 – Iogen Corporation announced today that Goldman Sachs & Co. of New York has invested $30 Million (CDN) in its renewable cellulose ethanol technology.
“Goldman is the first major Wall Street firm to make a commitment to cellulose ethanol,” says Iogen CEO Brian Foody. “Renewable fuels like cellulose ethanol are one of the main options President Bush recently highlighted to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.
Goldman’s investment gives it a minority stake in Iogen, the only company to be operating a demonstration facility that converts agriculture materials like straw, corn stalks, and switchgrass to ethanol. Goldman joins the Royal Dutch/Shell Group as a major investor. The funds will be used to accelerate Iogen’s commercialization program.
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Apax co-founder established $50m new digital media fund
05/01/2006 – Greycroft Partners, a venture capital firm recently established by Apax co-founder Alan Patricof, has launched a new digital media fund with an initial $50m of capital.
The new fund will focus on investments at an early revenue stage in the new media sector, including wireless, media and entertainment companies.
Patricof said, 'I established this fund because I believe we are now at a significant moment in the development of digital media.
'Digital technology, flexibility and power have been proven, but we have only started to see the range of applications that I am confident will transform the communications and media industries in the next decade,' Patricof continued.
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Cartasite Raises $3.2M Series A For Remote Monitoring
04/28/2006 – Cartasite, a leading provider of remote monitoring solutions for fleet management, today announced it has completed $3.2M round of venture funding. Acadia Partners V, LLC and Canterbury Partners, LP are top contributors to the multi-million dollar funding round. The Company’s new product will be publicly introduced in the next few weeks.
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Focus Ventures Closes $250M Third Fund
04/19/2006 – US-based Focus Venture Partners has closed its $250m third fund, Focus Ventures III. The latest fund brings the firm’s capital under management to $850m. Steve Bird, general partner of Focus Ventures, said, ‘With the success of our prior funds—Focus Ventures I, which was a top-quartile vintage 1997 fund, and Focus Ventures II, which closed in late 1999 and is on track for a similar result—Focus Ventures III was oversubscribed and appealed to a wide range of investors, by investing in top-tier, expansion-stage companies funded by premier, early stage VC funds, we have kept our loss rate low and produced strong returns for our limited partners.’
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Northwest Venture raises $656m fund for India
04/18/2006 – Norwest Venture Partners (NVP), promoted by US-based venture capitalist Pramod Haque, on Monday announced a $650m fund, targeted at technology firms in India and the US. This is the largest fund the firm has raised to date. ET had reported in its February 16 edition that NVP was close to announcing its new fund with a focus on cross-border firms in the consumer and Internet segments.
The fund — NVP X — is targeted at early, mid and late stage investments in the US, India and Israel, with focus on emerging growth opportunities in the global information technology sector, NVP said in a statement in Mumbai.
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Madrona Venture Group Closes $167 Million Third Fund
04/16/2006 – Madrona Venture Group, a top-tier venture capital firm focused on early-stage information technology investments in the Pacific Northwest, today announced that it has closed its third venture capital fund with commitments of $167 million, exceeding its $150 million target fund size. Including Fund III, Madrona has more than $400 million under management and 23 active investments. With 27 company exits for gain in the past 10 years, Madrona has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to recognize high-quality teams and actively help them to maximize their potential. As a result, Madrona attracted a premier group of investors to the new fund including university endowments, foundations and funds-of-funds.
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Magink raises $10.5m for liquid crystal billboards
04/13/2006 – Magink Display Technologies Inc. today announced that it closed a $10.5 million financing round. Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) led the round, joined by previous investors Formula Ventures and VantagePoint Venture Partners.
Founded in 2000 by CEO Ran Poliakine, Magink (originally called eMagin) develops and markets reflective digital ink, considered a breakthrough in daylight displays. The company’s technology is a plastic-coated non-drying ink whose display colors can be changed by computer commands.
Magink has raised $50 million to date. The company raised $27 million in its previous financing round in 2004, despite a dispute among shareholders that almost shut down the company.
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JBoss acquired by RedHat
04/11/2006 – JBoss Inc., which raised just $10 million in venture capital, has agreed to be acquired by Red Hat Inc. in a deal worth as much as $420 million.
For investors, the agreement puts an end to the rumors circulating through Silicon Valley about which software giant would eventually acquire the highly sought-after JBoss, an Atlanta-based developer of open source application server software.
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Garage Technology Ventures Raises Its Second Fund
03/31/2006 – Garage Technology Ventures, a seed- and early-stage venture fund, said Thursday that it created a new fund, which was led by Thomas Weisel Global Growth Partners.
In addition to Weisel other investors in Palo Alto-based Garage Technology Ventures I include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Silicon Valley Bank and E-Trade.
The primary purpose of the new fund is to co-invest with the firm's prior fund, Garage California Entrepreneurs Fund. The new fund's managing directors are Bill Reichert, Mohanjit Jolly and Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of the firm that was originally known as Garage.com.
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Lighthouse Capital teams with Magnolia Capital in Israel, plans new fund
03/28/2006 – Lighthouse Capital Partners said on Monday that it plans to partner with Magnolia Capital Partners on investment opportunities in Israel.

Lighthouse, which has offices in Menlo Park and Cambridge, Mass., also said it plans to raise money for its sixth fund, LCP VI, beginning in the third quarter of this year, focusing on its core sectors of technology and life sciences. Specific details on the size and closing date of the fund were not disclosed.
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Court Square Ventures closes $118M Fund II
03/27/2006 – Court Square Ventures has closed its second venture capital fund, Court Square Ventures II, with total commitments of $118m. With its new fund, Court Square will continue to focus on early stage opportunities at the intersection of communications, information technology and media technology. CSV II is expected to build a portfolio of between 12 and 15 companies. The fund recently made its first investment, leading a $15m Series C investment in SNOCAP.
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SAVP Partnership with Greenhill and Co. Inc.
04/07/2006 – While raising its second venture fund, Silicon Alley Venture Partners has decided to forego independence and team up with New York-based investment bank Greenhill & Co. Inc.
The two firms together have closed Greenhill SAVP with $80 million, with a plan for Silicon Alley to continue its investment strategy of targeting start-ups launching technology-enabled services or business information services in the New York tri-state area.
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PMC-Sierra Inc. acquires Passave
04/05/2006 – Dropping plans for an initial public offering after
legal tangles with UTStarcom Inc., fiber-to-the-home
chip company Passave has agreed to be acquired by
semiconductor giant PMC-Sierra Inc. in a $300 million
stock deal.
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US venture capitalists not too ready
03/31/2006 – U.S.-based venture capitalists don't seem too ready to
tire of staking new investments in India, staking out
hot technology with cheap price tags. In a twist on
that model, one Bangalore-based company recently
gobbled up the assets of an American start-up at a
fraction of the amount invested by VCs.
The assets of defunct drug delivery company Nobex
Corp., which raised some $78 million in venture capital
funding, will be folded into Biocon Ltd. after the
publicly traded Indian biotech company won
post-bankruptcy bidding with a $5 million offer. Biocon
had to revise its initial stalking horse bid of $3.5
million upwards after U.S. private equity firm Aisling
Capital placed its bid at $3.65 million, Dow Jones
Newswires reported last week.
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Intel has launched a new $50 million fund for investments in Brazil.
03/29/2006 – Intel Capital, the venture arm of the world's largest chip company, has launched a new $50 million fund for investments in Brazil.
Intel's launch of its Brazilian venture capital fund comes a little over three months after it announced a $250 million venture fund for India and four months after the announcement of a $50 million fund for investments in the Middle East. Though Intel has invested in Brazil since 1999, the new fund represents its strongest commitment there to date. Intel Capital has invested more than $35 million in 13 companies in the country since it began committing capital there.
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Signs of improvement
03/28/2006 – Signs of improvement in the industry include slower
rates of company and investor consolidation in 2005,
according to the annual Venture Insight study released
today from Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young LLP.
In 2005, the pool of active venture firms in the U.S.
declined by 5.6%, down from 7.5% the prior year. That
represents a tapering off of a consolidation trend that
has seen the number of VC firms shrink 49% since 2000,
partly because many first-time VCs closed shop after
failing to raise new capital.
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Siemens Venture Capital To Begin India Operations In June
03/25/2006 – Siemens Venture Capital, a EUR700 million corporate venture body for Siemens AG (SI), said Thursday that it is setting up activities in India from June to look at investment opportunities both in India and China. Siemens Venture Capital, or SVC, will invest in infrastructure technologies in the field of information and communications, medical solutions, automation and control, power, automotive technology, transportation systems and lighting, the company said in a news release.
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Devon Park Closes $55M First Fund for Life Science
03/22/2006 – Devon Park intends to focus primarily on investments in therapeutics – companies that are actively developing compounds that will be advanced through clinical trials prior to being marketed as FDA approved drugs.
Devon Park will also invest in medical device, diagnostic or drug discovery technology companies if they believe that the companies being considered are developing products and/or technologies with the potential to produce a transformation in the way in which a disease is treated or diagnosed or drugs are developed.
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Sony Invests $7.5M in Open-Source Oracle Competitor EnterpriseDB
03/20/2006 – Sony Online Entertainment Inc. is starting to move away from the Oracle databases that are the foundation of its online games, opting instead for a 2-year-old commercial open-source database EnterpriseDB. EnterpriseDB is built on PostgreSQL and processes business transactions and handles data that supports gaming. CEO and co-founder is Andy Astor who was a VP at webMethods.
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Adknowledge Announces $48 Million Investment by TCV
03/20/2006 – Adknowledge, Inc., a technology firm focused on helping small businesses better market to online consumers, announced today that it has sold a minority ownership interest to Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) for $48 million. As part of the investment in Adknowledge, two TCV partners, Henry Feinberg and Will Griffith, will join the Adknowledge board of directors.
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Verisign about to purchase m-Qube
03/20/2006 – VeriSign Inc. has agreed to purchase venture-backed mobile content publisher m-Qube Inc. for $250 million, in an attempt to better position itself between big
content companies and cellphone users.
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PharmAthene Inc. has agreed to merge with SIGA Technologies
03/15/2006 – A company that's looking to build "the most comprehensive portfolio of biodefense products addressing the nation's top five threats" - anthrax, smallpox, botulism, nerve and chemical attack and nuclear radiation threats - PharmAthene Inc. has agreed to merge with SIGA Technologies Inc.

The deal brings a clinical stage smallpox therapeutic to the PharmAthene pipeline, and since SIGA trades on Nasdaq, it grants the venture-backed company access to the public markets. After the stock deal, SIGA shareholders will own about 32% of the new company, and investors in PharmAthene will own the rest. PharmAthene, which has raised around $76 million in three rounds of funding from investors including MPM Capital, Bear Stearns Health Innoventures, HealthCare Ventures, Teachers Private Capital and MDS Capital.

Eric I. Richman, PharmAthene's vice president of business development and strategic planning, said that while the transaction "may afford us an opportunity to finance the company with a different set of investors," SIGA's status as a publicly traded company was not the primary reason for the deal.

Indeed, the SIGA deal is the latest example of a business development strategy whereby PharmAthene has - through strategic acquisitions - assembled a biodefense pipeline that includes treatments for anthrax chemical nerve agent poisoning. In addition to its smallpox candidate, SIGA brings a research pipeline that includes antiviral compounds to treat hemorrhagic fever viruses, which include potential bioterror agents such as Dengue, Ebola, Marburg and Lassa fever.
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SJF Ventures Closes $15M For Fund II
03/10/2006 – SJF Ventures is over halfway toward closing its second fund after raising more than $15 million earlier this year, the firm said.
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Bigfoot Networks secures $4M for Online Gaming
03/07/2006 – Austin gaming firm Bigfoot Networks Inc. landed $4 million in financing to help get its first product on the market this summer.
Venio Capital Partners, an early stage technology venture fund, invested the money.
Bigfoot, started by a team of executive MBA students from the University of Texas, makes technology to improve performance of online video games. The company is working to make a gaming accelerator card that would cut down on "lag" in online games.
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New Angel Group Forms To Back Northwestern CleanTech Start-Ups
03/04/2006 – The Northwest Energy Technology Collaborative is a joint effort of business, government, non-profit and educational institutions determined to accelerate the emergence and growth of the energy technology industry in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With world-class university and research centers and more than 300 new energy companies, our region is poised to become a global hub for emerging power technology.
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RadPharm, a provider of medical imaging services Raises $8M
03/02/2006 – RadPharm, Inc., a leading provider of centralized medical imaging and review services for global clinical trials, announced that the Company has raised $8 million in equity financing from Adams Street Partners, Tang Capital Partners and individual investors. This follows an earlier investment by Ampersand Ventures, and positions RadPharm to continue expanding its core lab service offering.
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News Corp Sued Over MySpace Deal
02/24/2006 – Brad Greenspan, the former chief executive of Intermix Media Inc., filed a complaint Thursday against his former company and venture-capital firm VantagePoint Venture Partners over Intermix's sale last year to News Corp. (NWS).
Greenspan charged Intermix directors with failing to carry out their fiduciary duties in the sale of the company that ran the popular social-networking site MySpace.com. The suit claims that the directors - including Richard Rosenblatt, Intermix's CEO at the time of the deal - sought personal gains and failed to act in the shareholders' best interests.
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Ignition Partners forms China investment co for $200M Fund
02/20/2006 – Seattle-based venture capital firm Ignition Partners said it has joined with several top China-focused investors to form a technology investment firm here.
The firm said the new company, called Qiming, has an initial 200 mln usd to invest in early-to-expansion-stage companies in the technology and export sector.
The China-focused investors include Duane Kuang, former director of Intel Capital China; and Gary Rieschel, founder of Mobius Venture Capital.
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Newport Media Raises $25M for Emerging Mobile Television Market
02/10/2006 – Newport Media, Inc., an innovative fabless semiconductor company providing mobile TV receivers, announced the closing of a $25 million Series B financing led by Oak Investment Partners. Previous investors Benchmark Capital, Venrock Associates, Global Catalyst Partners and Pinnacle Ventures joined Oak in this round. Newport Media has raised over $36 million to date.
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IGA in-game-advertising company receives $12M Series A injection
02/07/2006 – With in-game advertising forecast to grow by at least 40 percent this year and exceed $1 billion before the end of the decade, market pioneer IGA Worldwide, Inc. has secured a first close of $12 million in its initial round of institutional financing to further accelerate its growth.A consortium of investors led by New York-based Easton Capital Group and co-led by Morgenthaler Ventures and including existing investor DN Capital has subscribed to the Series A funding round, eager to capitalise on the group’s significant market traction and unique combination of ad agency and media experience, videogame culture, and cutting edge proprietary technologies.
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Salix Ventures Raising Up To $150M Fund III
01/24/2006 – Salix Ventures announced today its intention to raise up to $150 million for its third venture capital partnership, Salix Ventures III, L.P. The fund will focus on early-stage health care services investments with a small portion of the fund allocated to health care information technology companies. Salix expects a closing in June 2006.
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General Catalyst closed its 4th fund with $400M in capital commitments
01/24/2006 – General Catalyst Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs building technology-focused companies, today announced that it has closed its newest fund, General Catalyst Group IV, L.P. (General Catalyst IV). With nearly $400 million in subscriptions, the new fund enables General Catalyst to expand its current portfolio of more than 35 enterprise software, infrastructure software and applied technology businesses. Investors in General Catalyst IV include existing General Catalyst limited partners, major endowments and foundations. The launch of General Catalyst IV brings the firm's total capital under management to nearly $1 billion.
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Quickoffice closes $11.5M funding round for mobile office product
01/18/2006 – Quickoffice Inc. said Tuesday that it closed an $11.5 million funding round led by Silicon Valley venture firm Mayfield Fund. San Diego-based Shepherd Ventures and Advantage Capital Partners, which has offices around the country, also participated in the funding round. Quickoffice, a Plano-based provider of mobile office document software for "smart" cellphones, also said Shepherd Ventures board member Tom Siegel has joined Quickoffice's board of directors.
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Capital raised by Israeli high-tech companies reaches $1.34 billion in 2005
01/16/2006 – In 2005, 378 high-tech Israeli companies raised $1.34 billion from local and foreign venture investors, an eight percent decrease from the $1.46 billion raised in 2004, but 32 percent above 2003 levels. In Q4, 88 Israeli high-tech companies raised $264 million, a 21 percent decline from the $336 million raised by 90 companies in the third quarter and a 28 percent drop from the $366 million raised by 113 companies in the fourth quarter of 2004.
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Lightspeed closes $475M fund
01/09/2006 – Lightspeed Venture Partners said on Monday it has closed its seventh fund raising $475 million for start-ups and early stage information technology companies. Lightspeed of Menlo Park raised $75 million more than it had targeted for this fund. The firm now manages $1.3 billion.
Internet services, digital media, consumer electronics, infrastructure systems and software, semiconductors and emerging technologies are some of the areas where the money is targeted. Lightspeed said it will consider investing primarily in companies based in the United States but it also intends to spend some of the fund money in Israel and Asia.
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Browster Picks Up $5.8M for web browser plug-in
01/06/2006 – Browster, which makes a free plug-in for web browsers, said Thursday it had secured $5.8 million in first-round funding.
Advanced Technology Ventures and Vanguard Ventures led the round, part of which was completed about a year ago by a group that included First Round Capital and five individual venture capitalists.
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PixelOptics Raises $32M to develop auto-focus eyeglasses
01/06/2006 – A San Diego banking firm is investing up to $32 million in Roanoke's PixelOptics Inc. to help the company develop auto-focus eyeglasses to remedy a form of farsightedness common among those 45 and older.
PixelOptics President Ron Blum said the investment by Boston Health Group Inc. in what he called the "transformational" technology behind the lens will help millions of people worldwide see better as they grow older and develop presbyopia.
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XML automation company Olive Software raises $9M
12/30/2005 – Olive Software Inc., a developer of XML automation technologies, recently announced that it had secured a $9 million investment-financing round led by Pitango Venture Capital. Existing investor Sequoia Capital also participated.
Founded in 1999, Olive is a global provider of XML automation technologies. Olive's technology transforms any document from any source, while preserving its every aspect of a document in an intelligent and open digital format. With Olive's technology, organizations can have a single XML-base infrastructure for every document ever created.
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Pfizer invest $50M in Perlegen for 12 Percent Stake
12/28/2005 – Perlegen Sciences Inc. on Tuesday said Pfizer Inc. purchased $50 million of its preferred stock, taking a 12 percent stake in the private biotechnology company.
The company, which was spun off from Affymetrix Inc. in 2000, said Pfizer also agreed to buy up to $25 million more Perlegen stock if it carries out an initial public offering within the coming year. Perlegen is partially owned by Affymetrix, Maverick Capital, CSK Ventures, Eli Lilly & Co. and other institutional and private investors.
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Venture capitalists bet big on consumer gadgets
12/30/2005 – After years of investing in technology companies that supply businesses, VCs are paying lofty sums to fund dozens of consumer-focused start-ups that do everything from connecting digital devices in homes to making games for cellphones. Many venture capitalists will be out in force at next week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, hoping to get an inside track on the next gadget that could turn into an investment opportunity.
At CES next week, the National Venture Capital Association trade group is planning a "networking reception" for about 90 people at the show, the first time such an event has been held. And one venture firm, BA Venture Partners, is hosting a swanky dinner for 25 venture capitalists -- up from just 10 last year -- at the glittering Aureole restaurant at the Mandalay Bay hotel, says Sharon Wienbar, a managing director with the firm. The idea is to get venture firms together to share ideas and discuss new technologies and companies investors have seen at the show.
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MobiApps Secures $10M
12/19/2005 – Wireless vehicle and equipment-tracking vendor MobiApps Holdings snagged $10 million Friday in a second round of funding led by UOB Venture Management, with backing from IntelCapital in an effort by Intel to build its presence in India.
MobiApps intends to use the funds to spur its global sales and marketing efforts as well as develop and launch new products. The Bethesda, Maryland-based company also has operations in Singapore, and Bangalore, India.
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PhotoTLC Closes $10 Million in New Venture Capital Financing
12/15/2005 – PhotoTLC, the industry leader in personalized photo gifts and digital photo restorations, said today that it has closed $10 million in new venture capital financing. The round was led by Steamboat Ventures, the venture capital arm of The Walt Disney Company. Also participating in the round are the company's existing investor, El Dorado Ventures, and another new investor, the Bay Area Equity Fund, managed by JPMorgan.
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Ulthera Raises $5.5M Ulthera for therapeutic ultrasound product
12/14/2005 – Ulthera, a therapeutic ultrasound medical device company targeting the cosmetics market, today announced that it has raised $5.5m in Series A funding from world leading venture capital firm, 3i.

3i Investors Allan Ferguson and Paul Badawi join Ulthera co-founder, CEO and Chairman, Michael Slayton on the board.
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Pentaho Open Source Receives $5 Million in Series A Funding
12/10/2005 – Orlando, FL – December 8, 2005 - Today, Pentaho Corp., the world’s leading provider of Open Source Business Intelligence (BI) software, announced that it has secured $5 million in series A funding from two premiere venture capital firms with deep Open Source expertise. U.S.-based New Enterprise Associates (NEA) led the round in partnership with European-based Index Ventures.

Commenting on the investment, Andre M. Boisvert, Chairman and co-founder, stated “we were fortunate to have been able to fund the company through its initial product development phase and to deliver product to market. With real customers having validated our business model, I am delighted that we are now teaming up with two world-class venture firms that can not only provide us with growth capital but more importantly provide us with their wealth of Open Source expertise.”
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RSS Feed-Aggregator Attensa receives $9M Series B
12/05/2005 – The Portland, Oregon-based, venture-backed software company Attensa, Inc. recently announced that it has completed a Series B equity funding led by RSS Investors, which along with existing investors, SmartForest Ventures, bring its total investment to date to $12 million. This round of financing raised $9 million, with the Portland company, SmartForest, adding $4 million to RSS Investors' $5 million. This is RSSI's first investment.
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NeurogesX Gets $20M to help bring its treatment for pain
12/02/2005 – The pharmaceutical startup receives investor support to take its pain patch through clinical trials. NeurogesX said Thursday the pharmaceutical startup raised $20 million to help bring its treatment for pain to a damaged nerve or nervous system through clinical trials in the United States.
The company, based in San Carlos, California, has raised $85 million since its first round in 2000. Its product, called Transacin, is a dermal patch that helps to treat postherpetic neuralgia. Neuralgia is a condition caused by nerve damage associated with shingles and can’t be treated with typical painkillers.
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Islamic Investment Firm Venture Capital Bank Plans $250M Fund
12/01/2005 – VCBank to launch first of a kind US$250 million venture capital fund for investment in small and medium-sized enterprises in GCC & MENA. Venture Capital Bank (VCBank), the first dedicated Islamic venture capital investment bank, today announced the upcoming launch of a US$250 million venture capital fund - the first of its kind - focusing on investment in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the GCC and MENA regions. The Fund, which will be jointly established and co managed by Global Emerging Markets (GEM) Group, a leading US-based private investment firm with offices in New York, London and Paris, will target fundamentally sound and undervalued finance-seeking companies across a diverse range of industry sectors.
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Investcorp Technology Ventures raises $300M
12/05/2005 – Investcorp Technology Ventures raises the cash for a venture buyout fund focusing on taking tech companies private.
Buyout funds have been tearing through tech recently and posting the best returns in recent years, with one-year returns of 26.9 percent during the second quarter, up from 22 percent during the same period last year. Investcorp’s second fund will focus on taking tech companies private to accelerate growth, carving out promising divisions of other companies and providing them with cash, or providing late-stage growth capital.
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Technology Crossover Ventures closed the largest fund with $1.4 billion
11/27/2005 – Technology Crossover Ventures said it closed the largest technology-focused fund of the year with $1.4 billion in investments.
It’s the firm’s sixth fund and comes less than two years after TCV raised another substantial fund of $900 million in 2004. In both instances, investor interest exceeded expectations, prompting Palo Alto, Calif.-based TCV to boost the final size of the funds. It bumped up last year’s by $100 million and this year’s by $300 million.
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Perfect Commerce lands $30M in VC round
11/18/2005 – Perfect Commerce Inc. said Thursday that it has raised $30 million in venture capital -- one of the largest rounds raised locally in years. The deal was led by a $20 million investment in the Kansas City-based software company by New York-based Apax Partners. Perfect Commerce's existing investors ponied up an additional $10 million. Perfect Commerce makes supplier relationship management software used on the Internet for a subscription. It claims more than 500 clients for the software, including 100 clients in the Fortune 500.
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OQO gets $20m more in funding for pocket-sized PCs
11/15/2005 – OQO, the San Francisco-based pioneer of pocket-sized PCs running Microsoft Windows XP software, has secured an additional $20m in funding from a group of investors including Motorola.
The company, which manufacturers the model 01 and model 01+ "ultra personal computers," will use the new funds to boost its sales and marketing efforts and to "accelerate research and development of next generation ultra personal computer products and related technologies."
The oversubscribed round was led by Washington D.C.-based Paladin Capital Group with existing institutional investors.
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Life Science software company NetRegulus secures $6.2M in funding
11/15/2005 – NetRegulus(R), Inc., an established provider of enterprise compliance software for regulated industries, today announced that it has raised $6.2 million in Series B preferred equity funding. The financing round was led by Arizona-based Grayhawk Venture Partners and includes Advantage Capital and Wolf Ventures as well as existing shareholders KB Partners, Beecken Petty O'Keefe and Company, Odin Capital Group and Staley Capital.

Concurrent with this financing, the company has expanded its board of directors. John Bentley of Grayhawk Venture Partners and David O. Wolf of Wolf Ventures are joining current members Keith Bank, KB Partners; John Gustafson, Odin Capital Group; and Dave Siebert, NetRegulus' President and CEO.
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Life Sciences Investor Versant Ventures Closes $400M Fund
11/11/2005 – Versant Ventures, a leading healthcare venture capital firm, today announced the closing of Versant Venture Capital III, L.P., a $400M fund focused on investing in early-stage healthcare companies. In combination with Versant Venture Capital I and Versant Venture Capital II, the firm now manages more than $1 billion in capital dedicated to building successful healthcare companies. To date, Versant has invested in more than 65 companies in the medical device, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, healthcare services and healthcare information technology sectors.
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Fovea Pharmaceuticals Completes $25 million Series A Financing
11/9/2005 – Fovea is aiming at discovering, developing and commercializing innovative breakthrough drugs for the treatment of retinal diseases such as age-related macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, diabetic retinopathy or macular edema. These "back-of-the-eye diseases" affect large populations of patients (over 50 million people in North America and Europe). Despite their growing incidence, mainly due to ageing populations and to the increasing incidence of diabetes, there is still no satisfactory treatment and in most cases no treatment at all for these diseases. According to recent surveys, these pathologies lead to very high levels of morbidity and account for over 50% of all cases of legal blindness in Europe and North America.
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Yelp.com Gets $3M in VC Cash for social networking site
11/7/2005 – Bessemer Venture Partners said Friday it has backed Yelp.com, a service that combines social networking and online reviews, with a first round of funding in the range of $3 million to $8 million.
Based in San Francisco, Yelp features reviews that compile personal recommendations for things like restaurants, bars, spas, and even moving services. It also facilitates social networking between reviewers.
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LocalMatters gets $20M for acquisition
11/01/2005 – Local Matters Inc. obtained $20 million in secured equity financing, allowing the startup to purchase MyAreaGuide.com Inc. and Online Web Marketing Inc., the company announced Tuesday.
Headed by Perry Evans, who developed an online mapping directory that later became MapQuest, Denver-based Local Matters is developing a "shopping engine" for online directory providers such as Denver-based Dex Media Inc. and Cary, N.C.-based R.H. Donnelley Corp.
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Surface Logix Inc. closed on $32M private financing
10/29/2005 – Surface Logix of Boston has closed on $32 million of a $42 million committed private financing, with the $10 million second tranche expected to come in upon the completion of specific milestones.
Participants in the financing included current Surface Logix investors, Venrock Associates, Arch Venture Partners, CW Group, HBM Partners, TIAA-CREF, Healthcare Focus Fund and Intel Capital. Also participating were new investors Unilever Technology Ventures and unnamed individual investors.
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Zillow.com Secures Series A Financing
10/25/2005 – Real estate startup gets funding from Benchmark, Technology Crossover Ventures.
Two top VC firms are betting the team that made Expedia an online travel giant will have another big hit on their hands, this time with Zillow.com in the crowded field of online real estate services. Founded by Rich Barton, the former CEO of Expedia.com, Zillow, announced last week it would take sign-ups to preview its beta service.
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Crosslink Capital Raises $250 Million Venture Capital Fund
10/23/2005 – Crosslink Capital has closed Crosslink Ventures V, a $250 million venture capital fund focused on investments in technology and related services. The fund size exceeds the firm's original target of $200 million and reached a self-imposed cap of $250 million. Like prior funds, Crosslink Ventures V will have a multi-stage investment focus and maintain an active and early stage bias. Through its Crossover funds, Crosslink invests alongside its venture capital funds and continues to support its companies well after the initial public offering.
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Cisco to invest $100M in Indian start-up companies
10/23/2005 – Cisco Systems Inc. said on Wednesday it plans to invest $1.1 billion in India in the next three years, including $100 million to fund Indian start-up companies. Other parts of the plan announced today by Cisco CEO John Chambers on the first leg of a three-day swing through India include:
- $750 million for research and development.
- $150 million to provide leasing and financing to Cisco customers and partners.
- $100 million for customer support operations
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Soapbox Mobile Completes $10 Million Funding Round.
10/23/2005 – Soapbox Mobile, an innovator in mobile marketing and m-commerce solutions worldwide, announced today that it has secured $10 million in funding from Equal Elements, a technology-focused venture fund based in Santa Monica, Calif.
The company will use the investment to accelerate growth, enhance product development and expand sales and marketing efforts. Curtis Hutten, CEO of Equal Elements, has joined Soapbox Mobile’s board of directors.
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Morgenthaler closes $450M fund
10/14/2005 – Private-equity investor Morgenthaler Ventures has closed its eighth fund, MPVIII, with $450 million in capital commitments.
The money will support the firm's buyout group, which opened its first Boston office last summer. Morgenthaler is headquartered in Cleveland.
The firm plans to focus on middle-market transactions valued between $75 million and $250 million. Most of the firm's acquisition targets will likely have operating income in excess of $10 million.
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Alloy Ventures closes $368M fund
10/13/2005 – Alloy Ventures said on Wednesday that it has closed its fifth venture fund, Alloy Ventures 2005, with commitments of $368 million.
The Palo Alto firm said its total capital under management has now passed $1 billion and that it will continue to focus on seed and early-stage investing in information technology and life science companies.
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Light Sciences snags $35M in early stock offering
10/11/2005 – VIRxSYS has raised $31 million in its fifth round of funding, money that will be used to begin a Phase II clinical trial on the company's lead gene-based HIV drug. Since its founding in 1998, Gaithersburg-based VIRxSYS has raised about $63 million in equity financing. The company's shareholders include venture capitalists and individuals with high net worth.
"We had so much interest in this round that we were way over subscribed," says William Turner, founder of Portland, Maine-based Signature Capital, the placement agent for VIRxSYS' financing.
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VIRxSYS raises $31M for HIV drug work
10/11/2005 – VIRxSYS has raised $31 million in its fifth round of funding, money that will be used to begin a Phase II clinical trial on the company's lead gene-based HIV drug. Since its founding in 1998, Gaithersburg-based VIRxSYS has raised about $63 million in equity financing. The company's shareholders include venture capitalists and individuals with high net worth.
"We had so much interest in this round that we were way over subscribed," says William Turner, founder of Portland, Maine-based Signature Capital, the placement agent for VIRxSYS' financing.
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Serenex Raises $30 Million in Series C Financing
10/07/2005 – Serenex, Inc., an integrated oncology-focused drug discovery and development company, announced today that it has raised $30 million in a Series C private placement of preferred stock. Ritchie Capital led the round which included existing investors Intersouth Partners, Lilly Ventures, Mediphase Venture Partners, Takeda Research Investment and Seaflower Ventures.
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Mobile Gaming Company Mforma raised $30M in 3rd round of financing
10/05/2005 – >MFORMA Group Inc., a leading global publisher and distributor of mobile entertainment, has raised $30 million in a third round of institutional financing. The round was led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), one of the country’s premier venture capital firms, and includes participation by existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and General Catalyst Partners. The new funds will be used by MFORMA to develop new product lines and to expand global operations and marketing initiatives.
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Newly formed VC firm Spark Capital Closes $260M Fund
10/03/2005 – Spark Capital announced the formation of its new venture capital partnership focused on early-stage investments in the media, entertainment and technology industries. Founded by a team of accomplished investment professionals, Spark Capital is debuting with a first fund totaling $260 million.
"Over the last decade, telecom operators, Regional Bell Operating Companies and cable operators have spent enormous amounts of capital building out their broadband infrastructures. The next decade will be spent monetizing this infrastructure," said Todd Dagres, general partner at Spark Capital.
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InTouch Technologies Secures $12.1M Series C Funding Led by Galen Partners
09/30/2005 – InTouch Technologies, Inc., the leader in remote presence technology for healthcare providers, today announced the completion of a $12.1 million Series C financing.
The round was led by Galen Partners, a New York-based private equity firm specializing in healthcare investing. Galen was joined by existing investors including Acacia Venture Partners and InvestCare Partners, LP, a healthcare private equity fund managed by Beringea, LLC. Terms of the financing deal were not disclosed.
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ViVOtech, Wireless Cashier, Raises $18.25 in funding
09/28/2005 – ViVOtech Inc. has landed $18.25 million in a second round of venture capital funding.
The Santa Clara company specializes in contactless payment technology, involving radio frequency credit cards, debit cards, access cards and mobile devices with near field communication (NFC) technology. NFC allows two electronic devices to exchange information when they are held close together. ViVOtech devices are deployed in fast food restaurants, corporate cafeterias, parking garages, movie theaters and grocery stores. Draper Fisher Jurvetson, of Menlo Park, led the round and Josh Stein, of Draper Fisher, will join the ViVOtech board of directors.
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SHOP.COM Secures $25 Million From Oak Investment Partners
09/26/2005 – Shop.com the destination online marketplace where people conveniently shop for thousands of trusted brands using a single account, today announced that it closed its first ever venture funding through a $25 million round of financing led by Oak Investment Partners. SHOP.COM will utilize the capital infusion to support the company's aggressive marketing and customer service initiatives aimed at further accelerating the over 1,000% growth in traffic it demonstrated in 2004.
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Genesis Partners announced the closing of its 3rd fund at $150 million
09/23/2005 – After eighteen months of effort, Israel venture capital fund Genesis Partners announced today the completion of a $150 million capital raising round for its third fund. Genesis, which manages over $500 million in capital, completed its new fund six months after raising $100 million.
Investors in the new fund include international investment institutions, such as the pension funds of General Electric and IBM and the investment funds of the government of Singapore and CIBC. Genesis says that 70% of the investors in its previous funds also invested in the current fund.
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Molecular Imprints Completes $17M Financing
09/22/2005 – Molecular Imprints, Inc., the world leader in imprint lithography, raised $17 million in the first closing of a planned $25 million Series C financing. Molecular Imprints will use the money to expand its Imprio® product line to satisfy growing customer demand. To date, MII has raised over $60M in funding.
Investors participating in this financing include Dai Nippon Printing Company (DNP),
Alloy Ventures, Motorola Ventures, Harris & Harris, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Hakuto Co. Ltd., Asset Management Partners and others.
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Oanda receives $17M funding for currency exchange services
09/21/2005 – Index Ventures, a leading venture capital firm based in Europe, today announced a solo $17 million investment in OANDA, an innovator for global currency trading. OANDA has been profitable since it launched FXTrade, the world's first end-to-end, fully-automated currency trading platform in 2001. OANDA offers the lowest spreads in the online Forex market and will use its venture capital funding to further extend its market position and reach.
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Paul Capital Partners Closes $620 Million Fund of Funds
09/19/2005 – Paul Capital Partners today announced the final closing of its third Top Tier venture capital fund-of-funds. Top Tier III will make both primary and secondary investments in venture capital funds sponsored by top quartile performing managers and select emerging managers with the potential to perform in the top quartile. Paul Capital will continue its strategy of emphasizing investments in venture capital funds focused on growth industries such as healthcare and technology as well as investments in venture capital groups that have a more sector specific strategy.
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Killick Capital leads $6.2 million investment in Plasco Energy Group
09/19/2005 – Killick Capital Inc. today announced a $4.5 million growth equity investment in Plasco Energy Group (Plasco), the world leader in the design and commercialization of plasma gasification technology applied to the generation of electricity by converting Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) to a synthetic gas. Investing alongside Killick are: The Rose Corporation (Rose) of Toronto, Ontario; and Hera Holdings S.L. (Hera) of Barcelona, Spain, for a total C$7.3 million ($6.2 million) equity investment in Plasco.
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Formative Ventures Closes $77.5M Institutional Fund
09/19/2005 – Formative Ventures, a five-year old, early-stage venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, closed its first institutional fund at $77.5 million. The Formative Ventures Emerging Technology Fund will invest in early-stage technology companies in areas such as communications, wireless and Internet solutions.
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Blue Frog Mobile Completes $16 Million Series A Funding
09/15/2005 – Blue Frog Mobile, Inc., a leading mobile media and entertainment provider announced it has completed a $16 million Series A financing led by Canaan Partners. The round also includes investor MK Capital. Rutberg & Company served as the exclusive financial advisor to Blue Frog Mobile on the financing.
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Angiotech Announces Acquisition of Afmedica, Inc.
09/15/2005 – Angiotech Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ANPI; TSX: ANP) today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Afmedica, Inc., a private company developing perivascular technology using the drug rapamycin to treat peripheral vascular disease, coronary artery disease and end stage renal disease.
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Preventsys, network security company, Completes $9 Million Financing
09/13/2005 – Preventsys, Inc., a pioneer in automated network security auditing, today announced the successful closing of $9.2 million in Series B financing led by global private equity investment firm Apax Partners, Inc. Preventsys will utilize the funds to expand its presence in the network security infrastructure of large global enterprises, including financial services, healthcare, insurance, media and government organizations. Preventsys' significant product innovations in automated security auditing of network policies, vulnerability risk and remediation results, combined with strong traction among customers, have positioned them to be an emerging leader.
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The biosciences software company Teranode Raises $9.5M
09/12/2005 – Software company Teranode Corp. has raised $9.5 million in a second round of funding led by Cargill Ventures and Trident Capital, according to a news release. Ignition Partners and WRF Capital, which provided $2.6 million in the first round last year, also took part in this round. Seattle-based Teranode's software helps biotech companies design automated experiments for their drug candidates.
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VistaPrint Sets IPO at 10.05 Million Shares, $9-$11/Share
09/10/2005 – Underwriters for VistaPrint Ltd. on Wednesday set the terms of the company's pending initial public offering at 10.05 million common shares with an estimated price range of between $9 and $11 a share.
VistaPrint, an online supplier of graphic design services and customized printed products to small businesses and consumers, filed an IPO in June to sell up to $120 million in common stock, but it didn't set the IPO terms in its original registration.
VistaPrint will offer 5.5 million common shares, and the selling shareholders will offer about 4.55 million common shares, according to an amended Form S-1 filed Wednesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Goldman Sachs & Co., Bear Stearns & Co., SG Cowen & Co. and Jefferies Broadview were listed as underwriters for the offering.
The underwriters have the option to purchase up to 1.5 million additional shares from the selling shareholders to cover overallotments.
Assuming the offering prices at $10 a share, the mid-point of the expected range, the company would have an initial market capitalization of about $340 million, according to projected share information provided in the prospectus.
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biopharmaceutical company Replidyne Completes $62.5 Million Financing
09/10/2005 – Replidyne, Inc., a privately held biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of new anti-infective drugs, announced today that it has raised $62.5 million in a Series D financing led by several large institutional investors, including new investors Duquesne Capital Management, Healthcare Investment Partners and MDS Life Sciences Technology II funds (served by MDS Capital Corp.). Also participating in this financing round were existing investors HealthCare Ventures, TPG Ventures, Morgenthaler Ventures, Perseus-Soros BioPharmaceutical Fund, Sequel Venture Partners, Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd and Quintiles Transnational. Aquilo Partners, Inc. served as the exclusive placement agent for Replidyne.
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Kotura Raises $13M in Additional Funding
09/08/2005 – Kotura, Inc., the leading provider of silicon photonic products, today announced that it has raised $13 million in Series 2 preferred stock financing. The financing round was led by new investor GF Private Equity Group and included the Viterbi Group, also a new investor. Existing investors, ComVentures and ARCH Venture Partners participated in the round as well.
"Kotura has all the ingredients we look for in an investment: unique technology, significant customer traction, and a strong team," said David Fallace, Vice President of GF Private Equity Group. "We believe that Kotura is well-positioned to become a dominant player in the emerging silicon photonics market." Mr. Fallace will be joining Kotura's Board of Directors.
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Japan's Rakuten to acquire US' LinkShare for $425 million
09/08/2005 – Internet mall operator Rakuten Inc said it will acquire US Internet advertising agency LinkShare Corp for 425 mln usd, or about 46 bln yen, confirming an earlier newspaper report.

Rakuten, Japan's largest online shopping mall operator, said it will complete the acquisition in the next four to six weeks.

'The decision to take full control of LinkShare is our first step in actively developing business opportunities in overseas countries, as we had so far focused on consolidating domestic operation,' Rakuten said in a statement.
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LeftHand Networks Secures $25 Million in Series C Funding
09/07/2005 – LeftHand Networks, a leading provider of complete iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions built using patented storage clustering technology, today announced completion of a $25 million dollar round of Series C financing. The C round funding brings the total equity investment in LeftHand Networks to $75 million. Valhalla Partners led the round, with new participation from JPMorgan Chase, as well as funding support from all existing venture investors.
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CollabNet Software Service Receives $9.5 Million in Private Financing
09/06/2005 – CollabNet, the leading provider of on-demand distributed development solutions, today announced that it has closed a $9.5 million round of private financing. This Series B1 financing was supported by Benchmark, Industry Ventures, Intel, Norwest Venture Partners, and WR Hambrecht. The company, which has maintained its leadership position in the distributed software development market for more than six years, plans to invest this round of funding in sales, marketing, and other strategic investments.
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Aberdare Pharma VC Raises $150 New Fund
09/06/2005 – Aberdare Ventures closed a $150-million third fund Tuesday despite a public market that has been unwilling to offer the firm’s portfolio companies competitive valuations.
Aberdare, based in San Francisco, focuses primarily on early-stage pharmaceutical and medical device companies. It recently sold Idun Pharmaceuticals, a company working in the area of “apoptosis,” the scientific word for programmed cell death, to drug giant Pfizer (see Drugs and Devices). Aberdare managing partner Paul Klingenstein said the deal was worth between $400 million and $500 million, although the financial details of the deal were not officially disclosed.
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ThingMagic nabs $10M in VC to step up RFID reader development
09/02/2005 – ThingMagic Inc. has $10 million in financing to step up development of its radio-frequency identification (RFID) readers.
It marks the Cambridge-based company's first formal round of venture capital. ThingMagic reports it has been profitable since 2000, when it was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Exxel Group led the round, which included Morningside Technology Ventures Ltd., Inventec Appliances and Top Line Growth Capital LLC.
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Com2uS Raises US$ 8 Million From US Venture Capital Firms
09/02/2005 – The Seoul based Com2uS, a leading developer and publisher of mobile games, announced that it has raised US$ 8 million in financing led by US-based venture capital firms Storm Ventures and Walden International. This round of investment represents the largest amount ever raised by a Korean mobile game company. The new funding will boost not only Com2uS’ game development programs, but also marketing activities within Korean and international markets.
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Jobster to expand with $19.5 million
09/01/2005 – Jobster said Tuesday it had raised $19.5 million in a second round of venture funding, bringing its total financing to $30 million as the online recruiting company seeks to expand internationally.
Seattle-based online recruiter says it doesn’t need more cash, but gets $19.5 million while the checkbooks are open.
The fast-growing company, which runs a Salesforce.com-like site for corporate recruiters, announced just last week that it had finalized its acquisition of vertical search engine WorkZoo, which scrapes and indexes listings from major job boards.
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GPS Firm Destinator Technologies Raises $9 Million
09/01/2005 – Destinator Technologies, the leading provider of personalized navigation software and live navigation-based mobile services, today announced that it has raised $9 million in its B round of funding, bringing the total amount of capital raised to $17 million. Participating in the round are a number of leading institutional investors.
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Granite Ventures Closes $350M Fund
09/01/2005 – Granite Ventures closed a $350-million fund Monday, without the help of long-time partner Adobe. Granite has run the venture investments for software maker Adobe since 1994, investing four generations of funds.
“[Adobe is] increasingly looking more to make venture investments that are very strategic to their existing businesses,” said the Managing Director Mr. Zimits.
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Intechra Attracts $4 Million Equity Investment Led By Chrysalis Ventures
08/24/2005 – Intechra Holding Corporation, parent of wholly owned subsidiary, Intechra LLC, a leading recycler and remarketer of computers and related information technology assets, has received $4 million in equity funding. The financing was led by Chrysalis Ventures, a leading source of equity capital for growth companies in the Southeast and Midwest.
The $4 million Series B preferred equity investment will be used to support Intechra’s national expansion and acquisition strategy, company officials said. Chrysalis’ co-investors in the financing include existing investors Votum Capital, LLC, and Clayton Associates.
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Vonage, a provider of phone services plans $600 million IPO
08/24/2005 – Vonage, which provides residential phone services over the Internet, is planning an initial public offering to raise as much as $600 million, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Citing a person familiar with the matter, the newspaper said Vonage had already raised more than $400 million in venture capital from firms that include Bain Capital, 3i Group and Institutional Venture Partners.
Vonage provides cheap local and long-distance phone services to about 800,000 households, making it the largest U.S. Internet-based phone company.
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EPartners raises $25 million led by Needham
08/23/2005 – EPartners, an information technology consulting company, said it has raised $25 million in equity funding from current investors and new investor Needham Capital Partners.
EPartners, which moved to Seattle from Dallas last year after merging with EYT of Virginia, said Chairman Howard Diamond will also become CEO, replacing Dan Duffy.
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Trinity Ventures Closes $300 Million Trinity IX Fund
08/11/2005 – Trinity Ventures, an investor in early-stage information technology companies, today announced the closing of Trinity Ventures IX. The fund will invest in the software, networking systems, and services sectors with a particular emphasis on IT security, business and consumer online services, digital media and mobile technology. The closing of Trinity IX brings Trinity Ventures' cumulative capital under management to $1.2 billion.
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Cisco To Buy Sheer Networks For $97M After Start-Up Raises $55M
07/27/2005 – Cisco Systems, Inc., today announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Sheer Networks of San Jose, Calif. Sheer Networks is a pioneer in the development of intelligent network and service management products for service providers and large enterprises. Sheer's technology can adapt to network changes easily, scale to large networks, and help extend new technologies and services to simplify the difficult task of monitoring and maintaining complex networks.
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Search Engine Marketing Company Icrossing Raised $13M
07/13/2005 – icrossing, Inc., the largest independent search engine marketing firm, has announced an investment of $13 Million, which includes new investors RRE Ventures of New York City and Generation Partners of San Francisco. The investment banking firm Piper Jaffray represented icrossing in the transaction.
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Spanlink VoIP Secures $12 Million in Series A Funding
07/12/2005 – Spanlink Communications, a leader in customer interaction solutions that leverage VoIP technology, today announced that it has completed a $12 million round of Series A financing from BlueStream Ventures and Split Rock Partners. Travis Winkey, co-founder of BlueStream Ventures, and Michael Gorman, co-founder and managing director of Split Rock Partners, have joined the Spanlink board of directors.
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The Paypal Founders Closed $50 Million Venture Fund
07/12/2005 – The founders of PayPal and other successful startups announced today that they have launched a venture fund, with initial subscriptions of $50 million. The Founders Fund focuses on emerging companies in the consumer Internet sector. Unlike traditional venture capital funds, The Founders Fund is managed exclusively by entrepreneurs who have successfully developed their own companies, which provides the fund with unmatched depth of knowledge and real-world expertise for building companies from the ground up. Fund managers also have significant prior experience in venture capital and are early investors in some of the most prominent consumer Internet and enterprise start-ups of the past few years, including Facebook, Friendster, LinkedIn and IronPort.
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LGC Wireless Raises $11 Million in Financing Led by Rembrandt Venture Partners
07/11/2005 – LGC Wireless, a market leader in in-building wireless networking solutions, announced today it secured $11 million in a late-stage mezzanine financing. The company plans to use the funds for general working capital and to continue its expansion of international sales activities. The round was led by Rembrandt Venture Partners, along with strong support from nearly all existing investors. LGC Wireless, which was established in 1996, has raised $91 million to date.
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PhytoMedical to Obtain Up to $10,000,000 in Equity Financing
07/11/2005 – PhytoMedical Technologies, Inc., an early stage research based biopharmaceutical company focused on the identification, development, and eventual commercialization of innovative plant derived pharmaceutical and nutraceutical compounds, today announced that it has entered into an agreement to raise up to $10 million in equity financing from Fusion Capital Fund II, LLC, a Chicago-based institutional investor.
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Potentia semiconductor raised US$8 million in VC funds
07/08/2005 – Ottawa's Potentia Semiconductor has pocketed US$8 million in equity financing, further extending the region's venture capital streak.

Funding came from VenGrowth Private Equity Partners of Toronto, Kodiak Venture Partners of Massachusetts, and Teachers' Private Capital, the private equity arm of the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Board.
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Online game distributor Boonty gets $10 million in new funding
07/08/2005 – The Boonty Co., a provider to e-commerce sites of downloadable games, has received $10 million in second-round funding from Rothschild Gestion, SPEF Venture and the company`s existing investors OTC Asset Management and Entrepreneur Venture.
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NextHop Technologies Closes $10.5 Million Series B
07/08/2005 – NextHop Technologies Inc., the definitive source for network software solutions, today announced that it has closed a Series B funding round of $10.5 million. These funds will be used to continue development and marketing of NextHop's converged enterprise wired/wireless LAN switching platform. This most recent financing included all of NextHop's previous investment partners: New Enterprise Associates, Duchossois Technology Partners, Labrador Ventures, and Parker Price Venture Capital. This brings total funding in the company to $35 million.
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WhenU.com Secures $15M From Trident Capital
07/06/2005 – WhenU.com, Inc., a leading provider of software-based contextual online advertising, announced today that it secured $15M million of Series A funding from Trident Capital, a leading private equity firm focused on investments in the business services, information services and software sectors across a wide variety of industries. Trident Capital's investment in WhenU follows $20M in funding secured earlier this year from ABS Capital Partners. The funds will be used to continue product development and provide working capital. Venetia Kontogouris, a managing director at Trident, joins WhenU's Board of Directors.
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Nanoplex Technologies has raised over $2.5 million
07/06/2005 – Nanoplex Technologies Inc., a Mountain View, Calif.-based developer of nanoparticle-based products, has raised over $2.5 million in Series B funding, according to a regulatory filing. No participating VC firms are listed, although Sam Colella, a managing director with Versant Ventures, is listed as a director.
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Pannaway Technologies Announces $15.6 Million in Private Funding
07/06/2005 – Pannaway Technologies, Inc., designers and developers of converged broadband voice, video and data platforms, today announced that it has successfully completed a $15.6 million E round of funding from private investors led by S. Robert Levine, the company's principal investor. This latest round brings the Pannaway's total investment to $56.1 million in private funding and was oversubscribed, as were the company's four previous rounds. Because the company carries zero debt it will be able to use this cash infusion without restriction to further research and development for its Service Convergence Network (SCN(TM)); expand its service and support organization and programs; and move forward with expansion into emerging markets which include Department of Defense, municipalities, multi-tenant units (MTU), and multi-dwelling units (MDU).
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Service-now.com received $2.5 Million in Series A Equity Funding
07/06/2005 – Service-now.com, a provider of on-demand IT service and asset management solutions, today announced that it has received $2.50 million in a Series A private equity funding from JMI Equity Fund. Proceeds from the financing will be used to expand sales and marketing operations as well as for general operating capital.
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Teledvance Announces Close Of $15 Million in Funding Led By MK Capital
07/01/2005 – Teledvance Communications, a leading provider of IT Communication Solutions, today announced it has closed on $15 million in funding, led by MK Capital, a Chicago-based venture firm. The funding also included investments from The Productivity Fund IV and private individual investors. It will be used to support a rapid expansion of Teledvance's industry leading IT Communication Solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises.
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KANA Software Completes a $2.4 Million Equity Financing
07/01/2005 – KANA Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: KANAE), a leading provider of Service Resolution Management (SRM) solutions, today announced that it completed a private placement of 1,631,541 shares of common stock with institutional investors at a price of $1.471 per share for aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $2.4 million. In addition, KANA issued the investors warrants to purchase a total of 815,769 shares of common stock at an exercise price of $2.452. The parties closed the private placement on June 30, 2005. The proceeds will add to the company's working capital.
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Flywheel Ventures Closes $31 Million Venture Capital Fund
06/29/2005 – Flywheel Ventures, a Southwest/Rockies-based early-stage venture capital firm, today announced the final close of its first institutional venture capital fund, Flywheel I, L.P. The $31 million fund, with 75% of committed capital from institutions, will invest in seed and early-stage information technology and physical sciences ventures located primarily in New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona.
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Torax Medical Inc. Completes $10 Million Series B Financing
06/29/2005 – Torax Medical Inc., a clinical stage medical device company, announced today that it has completed a $10 million Series B round of financing, led by Thomas, McNerney & Partners, Minneapolis, Minn., and Sanderling Ventures, San Mateo, Calif. Mayo Medical Ventures, Rochester, Minn., also participated.
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Applied Materials to Acquire Wafer Clean Technology from SCP
06/29/2005 – SCP Global Technologies, Inc. (SCP), a leading provider of wafer wet cleaning solutions, today announced the signing of an agreement to sell its single wafer cleaning technology and related intellectual property for an undisclosed amount of money to Applied Materials, Inc.
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INNOVIVE Pharmaceuticals Completes $2.25 Million Private Financing
06/29/2005 – The biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Manhattan, announced today that it has raised $2.25 million in a convertible note financing. Paramount BioCapital, Inc. served as the placement agent.
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Xceive Secures $13.5 Million in Series C Financing
06/29/2005 – Xceive Corporation, developer of the world's first fully integrated multi-standard RF-to-baseband transceiver ICs for TVs, PC TVs, set-top boxes, mobile phones, and other innovative consumer electronic devices, announced today that it closed its Series C funding with $13.5 million in investments. Lead investor, Sequoia Capital, joins repeat investors Alliance Ventures, BA Venture Partners and Ignite Group in supporting Xceive's plans to expand current activity in research and development, increase production, and continue staffing in strategic geographical locations.
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IsoRay Medical, Inc. Completes Final Round of Private Capital Funding
06/28/2005 – IsoRay Medical, Inc., the manufacturer and distributor of a new brachytherapy seed isotope for the treatment of prostate cancer, has closed its final round of angel and private capital fundraising, said Roger Girard, chairman and CEO.
Girard said the company has raised more than $10 million in debt and equity over the last 18 months through a private offering. The next round of funding through institutional and public sectors is scheduled for October 2005.
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Cisco buys security vendor, NetSift for US$30M
06/28/2005 – Snapping up another small security vendor, Cisco Systems this week said it plans to acquire NetSift for US30 million in cash and options.
US-based NetSift, a privately held, 15-employee company founded in June 2004, would add technology for deep packet processing. Cisco said it plans to incorporate the technology into its modular switching platforms and other areas.
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Meriton Networks Secures $54 million in Series C oversubscribed Funding
06/28/2005 – Meriton Networks Inc., provider of the optical networking foundation for 21st century networks, announced today that it has secured $54 million (US dollars) in Series C funding. The oversubscribed round was led by two new prominent investors, VantagePoint Venture Partners and Nomura International. The round now provides Meriton's recently appointed CEO Mike Pascoe with the resources necessary to aggressively pursue the company's business objectives.
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GMAC provides $40.5 Million in Financing for a Washington, D.C. Hotel
06/27/2005 – The 184,000-square-foot Residence Inn Capitol Hill is situated on 0.62 acres at 333 E Street SW. The extended-stay hotel has 233 rooms and includes 1,400 square-feet of meeting space, an indoor swimming pool and whirlpool spa, an exercise room, a gift shop, guest laundry facilities and 104 underground parking spaces.
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Redknee Completes Financing for $10.0 Million
06/27/2005 – Redknee Inc., a leading global provider of communication software to wireless telecommunication network operators, today announced the closing of US$10 Million in debt financing led by MMV Financial Inc. HSBC Capital (Canada) Inc. also participated in the financing.
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ProfitLine Closes $15 Million Round of Series B Funding
6/23/2005 – ProfitLine, the premier provider of telecom expense management services, today announced it has completed a $15 million round of Series B financing. The round was led by FTVentures and included participation from current investor, Menlo Ventures.
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DriveCam Get $18M Series B Venture Funding
6/22/2005 – DriveCam, a maker of video systems for commercial transportation fleets intended to record collisions, said it obtained $18 million in Series B financing. Menlo Ventures was the lead investor with $10.7 million, followed by JMI Equity, with $7 million. DriveCam management also contributed to the funding, which will be used to expand the company’s growth in markets and personnel.
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RFID Technology Vendor RF Code secures $20 million in new financing
6/21/2005 – RF Code, Inc., a premier developer of hybrid RFID data management software and enabling technologies today announced the closing of a $20 million round of venture capital. The investment marks the first institutional round of funding in the company's eight-year history. The new financing was led by QuestMark Partners of Baltimore, MD and includes Intel Capital of Santa Clara, CA. Previous investors also participated in the round.
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Prism Venture Partners Closes Fifth Fund at $250 Million
6/20/2005 – Prism Venture Partners (Prism), a leading venture capital firm with investments in communications, software and life sciences, today announced it has closed its fifth fund, Prism Venture Partners V, L.P. (PVP V) at $250 million. This latest fund brings the firm's total capital under management to approximately $1.25 billion.
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Network Appliance Buys Decru For $272 million
6/17/2005 – Network storage systems products maker Network Appliance Inc. says it's buying Decru Inc. for approximately $272 million in cash and stock. Decru sells storage security products.
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Meru Networks secured $12M in funding
6/16/2005 – Cellular wireless technology developer Meru Networks says it's raised $12 million in a third round of funding, bringing the company's total amount of funding to $42.7 million to date. BlueStream Ventures, Clearstone Venture Partners and NeoCarta Ventures led the round for the Sunnyvale-based company.
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Edgetrade Closes Series A Financing with the Edison Venture Fund
6/15/2005 – EDGETRADE, a privately held independent provider of Agency Algorithmic Trading Strategies and Advanced Direct Market Access (DMA) trading technologies, announced today, it has completed its first round of Venture financing from the Edison Venture Fund. Established in 1986, Edison provides capital and value-added services to expansion stage information technology businesses. The company will utilize the proceeds to expand technological development, implement marketing programs, and increase client services.
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SWsoft has secured a $12.4 million first round of venture financing.
6/15/2005 – The company makes software that Internet service providers and companies use to manage network hardware that hosts data and content. The investment comes from New York-based Insight Venture Partners, Larchmont, N.Y.-based Bessemer Venture Partners and Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel Capital.
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Intel creates $200M investment fund for China
6/14/2005 – In a move intended to strengthen Intel's (Profile, Products, Articles) commitment to China's IT industry, the company announced Monday it has established a $200 million fund to invest in Chinese technology companies.
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Cierra, Inc. Raises $21M from Top Venture Healthcare Investors
6/14/2005 – Cierra, Inc. today announced a $21 million financing led by Delphi Ventures, Menlo Park, CA. The round also received strong support from current investors including Morgenthaler Ventures, Split Rock Ventures and Frazier Healthcare Ventures. The funds will be used primarily to launch US clinical trials and to initiate commercialization of Cierra's non-implant, catheter-based technology focused on migraine reduction by closure of Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO) in the heart.
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SOMA Networks Raises $50 Million in Financing for Expansion
6/13/2005 – SOMA Networks, Inc., a leading provider of last-mile broadband wireless access technology delivering multi-megabit broadband access and landline-quality voice services, today announced that it has secured $50 million in late-stage funding. Led by financial investors, Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd. (Temasek), and Morgan Stanley Venture Partners, including participation from NeoCarta Ventures, Inc., and Endeavour Investments Limited, this round of $35 million complements $15 million of strategic financing SOMA Networks closed in late 2004.
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Covergence Secures $10 Million in Series B Funding
6/13/2005 – Covergence, innovators of a ground-breaking real-time services and applications management solution, today announced it has secured $10M in Series B funding, led by Highland Capital Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. Highland and North Bridge led Covergence's first round of funding, which totaled $6M and closed in January 2004. In a related announcement, the company also named networking industry veteran, Bob O'Neil, president and CEO.
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Nanosolar closes $20 million Series B financing led by Mohr Davidow Ventures
6/10/2005 – Nanosolar, Inc., the technology leader in delivering the world's most cost-efficient solar electricity, today announced that it closed $20 million in Series B funding last month. This increases the total amount of funding secured by the company to $37 million (not including additional loans). Led by MDV (Mohr Davidow Ventures), the Series B round also includes Mitsui, Japan's largest distribution company, and Onpoint, the U.S. Army's venture fund, in addition to previous investors which included Benchmark Capital and others. The funding will support the company's move into commercial production. As part of the financing, MDV's Erik Straser has joined the company's board of directors.
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eFunds Acquires WildCard Systems For $228.8M
6/10/2005 – Based in Sunrise, Fla., WildCard provides pre-paid/stored value cards to retailers and insurance companies. In announcing the acquisition Thursday, eFunds said the purchase price does not include a $22.8 million holdback or a supplementary payment of $58.8 million, which is dependent on Wildcard's 2006 revenues.
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Oracle to buy small software company TimesTen

6/9/2005 – Oracle Corp. is buying data TimesTen Inc.. Redwood Shores software giant Oracle did not say how much it would pay for TimesTen, which makes software for data management used in securities trading or to handle billing of large numbers of customers. Oracle said TimesTen's customers include Cisco Systems, Ericsson, Nokia and United Airlines.

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Clear Shape Technologies receives $5M investments
6/9/2005 – Clear Shape Technologies Inc., a semiconductor design for manufacturing (DFM) software and technologies company, has raised more than $5 million in its second round of venture financing, bringing total funding to more than $10 million. The most recent round was led by Intel Capital, Intel Corporation’s strategic investment program, with participation from KT Venture Group, the investment partner of KLA-Tencor (Nasdaq: KLAC). Early in 2004 US Venture Partners led the Series A financing with participation from Telos Ventures and AsiaTech Management. The current funding round will be used to help accelerate the development and deployment of Clear Shape’s DFM software and technologies.
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Osiris lands $50M for stem cell trials
6/8/2005 – Adult stem cell technology company Osiris Therapeutics Inc. has raised $50 million in equity and debt to fund ongoing clinical trial programs. The company's first product, Prochymal, is intended to treat a disease that affects leukemia patients who have received a bone marrow transplant. It is currently in Phase II trials.
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PC Guardian Technologies raises $6M Series A
6/6/2005 – The San Francisco company, which sells encryption software, said Altos Ventures and Cardinal Venture Capital both gave money in the round.
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Klir Technologies Closes $8.7 Million Series A Financing
6/3/2005 – Klir Technologies(TM), the first provider of on demand real-time network performance and analytics for the middle market, today announced it raised $8.7 million in equity financing in a Series A round led by Ignition Venture Partners and MK Capital. The funds will be used for sales, marketing, business development and continued investment in the Company's service delivery platform.
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TecNet Partners Form Pontis Venture Partners with $37M First Fund
6/1/2005 – Several partners from Austrian VC firm TecNet leave to form Pontis Venture Partners. Newly formed Vienna-based venture capital firm announced the closing of $37 million I Fund.
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Affymetrix To Acquire Genotyping Co. ParAllele For About $120M In Equity
6/1/2005 – Affymetrix, the pioneer of DNA microarray technology, will acquire ParAllele Bioscience for about $120 million in a deal expected to close in the third quarter of the year.
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Paratek secured $15 million in Series C venture capital
6/1/2005 – Columbia-based Paratek has secured hundreds of patents covering technology that improves the electronic circuitry in wireless communications networks. Executives say Paratek's advances will lead to smaller and powerful cellular devices able to better process the signal frequencies needed to transmit voice and data traffic.
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Local Matters Raises $15M in 1st Round of Financing
5/31/2005 – Local Matters, a new company providing home directory publishers, mobile and directory assistance service providers with tech solutions in local search (formed by the merger of three companies: Aptas, ISx and YP Solutions) has raised $15 million in first round of funding.
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Search engine Become.com raises $7.2M in Series B
5/31/2005 – The Mountain View company said the Transcosmos venture capital group led this round, while angel investors Rob Conway and Bob Bozeman also gave money.
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Cisco To Buy FineGround Networks For $70M
5/27/2005 – The privately held, Campbell, Calif.-based FineGround makes network equipment that improves end-user response times by up to 5 times, reduces application bandwidth usage by up to 90 percent, and reduces the load on servers by up to 90 percent, Cisco said.
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Cylene Pharmaceuticals Raises $26.3 Million in Series B Financing
5/26/2005 – Cylene Pharmaceuticals, an oncology drug discovery and development company, today announced the completion of a $26.3 million Series B financing, led by Coastview Capital. The funding will allow Cylene to advance CX-3543, its lead product for the treatment of multiple cancers, into clinical development. William Rice, Ph.D., President and CEO of Cylene announced the financing today at the 7th Annual C21 BioVentures Conference in Monterey, California.
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Canada 1Q Venture Investing Down 22%; Fundraising Up 78%
5/18/2005 – Investments by Canadian venture-capital firms fell 22% in the first quarter from a year earlier, but capital raised by venture funds for future investments jumped 78%, the Canadian Venture Capital Association and Thomson Macdonald said Tuesday.
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CSFB Closes Third Secondary Fund with $2.4B

5/17/2005 – Credit Suisse First Boston Private Equity Strategic Partners III is comprised of three separate funds or fund components: a $1.9 billion LBO vehicle, a $315 million real estate component and a $210 million venture capital fund. All three funds will begin their investment period on July 1st and the firm is already working on transactions for them.

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Storm Ventures Closes $220M Third Fund
5/17/2005 – Early stage venture firm Storm Ventures said it closed a $220 million venture capital fund that will focus primarily on investment opportunities in seed and early-stage companies in information technology, communications and networking.
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European VC Exits Down In Q1, Slowed By Stock Market
5/13/2005 – Venture capital exits in Europe slowed in the first quarter of 2005, off the back of a strong fourth quarter 2004, according to the European Liquidity Report from VentureOne.
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IDG Ventures Boston Closes $180 Million Fund II
5/11/2005 – IDG Ventures Boston, an early stage venture capital firm focused on investing in information and healthcare technology companies, today announced the first and final close of its second fund. The $180 million fund will invest in high-growth emerging market segments in the information technology and healthcare technology sectors and focus on helping entrepreneurs build world-class companies.
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Fabless Semiconductor Fulcrum Raises $20M Series C
5/9/2005 – Calabasas-based Fulcrum Microsystems said this morning that it has raised a $20M Seriers C venture round of funding. The round came from Granite Ventures, and included participation by existing investors Infinity Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Palomar Ventures, and Worldview Technology Partners.
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Microsoft Launches IP Ventures Initiative To Provide Tech To Start-Ups
5/5/2005 – Microsoft has unveiled an initiative to provide start-up companies with access to some of the software company's intellectual property. The Microsoft Intellectual Property Ventures programme currently offers licences for 20 technologies in areas such as gaming, databases and security.
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ESP Pharma Founders Open Private Equity Firm
5/4/2005 – Howard Weisman, S. Douglas Sheldon and Dr. Jeffery Z. Li, co-founders of ESP Pharma, and its predecessor ESP Partners, LLC announced today the formation of ESP Equity Partners LLC. They will all be General Partners in the new company. Focused on emerging biotechnology and pharmaceutical investment opportunities in North America, Europe, and Asia, ESP Equity Partners will leverage their pharmaceutical general management, production, sales and marketing experience in the international pharmaceutical industry with entrepreneurs and investors around the world.
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Carmel Ventures Closes $200M 2nd Fund
5/4/2005 – Ahead of schedule, Carmel Ventures, one of Israel's leading VC firms, announced the successful raising of US$200 million for Carmel Ventures II to focus on software and communications investments.
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Benchmark Capital Raises Second Israel Fund Of $250M
5/4/2005 – Benchmark Capital, a leading early stage venture capital firm, today announced that it has raised a second fund focused on investments in Israeli high tech. The $250 million fund, Benchmark Israel II, will continue to focus on early stage software, Internet, applications, and communications companies. Benchmark Israel II follows the firm’s first Israel fund of $240 million, raised in March 2001.
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InPhase gets $5M In Series C Funds For Holographic Data Storage Technology

5/3/2005 – InPhase Technologies Inc., a Longmont-based data-storage company whose holographic technology will allow for 300 gigabytes of storage per disc and compete with tape storage. InPhase raised the first $5 million of a large third round of venture capital in the second quarter.

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Canaan Partners Closes its $450M VII Fund
5/3/2005 – The Menlo Park venture capital firm Canaan Partners said the close of Canaan VII brings to $2.2 billion, the total amount the firm has raised from investors to give startups money to grow.
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Levensohn Venture Partners Closes $60M Third Fund
4/26/2005 – Levensohn Venture Partners has closed its third venture capital fund and will focus on early-commercialisation stage investments in IT companies.
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Clearstone Closes Third Fund With $200M, Makes Four Investments
4/26/2005 – Santa Monica-based Clearstone Venture Partners announced that it has raised a new, $200M venture capital fund focused on the Internet, information management, wireless communications, enhanced business collaboration, and management of enterprise operations.
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