Wireless
Streamezzo
Streamezzo Group of Paris, a provider of rich media technology and platforms for mobile communications, has closed a $22 million Series C round. Kuwaiti investment group National Technology Enterprise Company, a new investor, joined the returning Sofinnova Partners, AXA Private Equity, I-Source Gestion, Sofinnova Ventures, and GET Valorisation, all of Paris, as well as Qualcomm Corp. of San Diego in the round. The company has raised $48 million in venture capital overall. Streamezzo was founded in 2003 to sell technology that enables streaming media (based on the MPEG-4 standard) over mobile-phone networks. It now designs, develops and markets tools that make mobile phone content more interactive. Its offerings include TV-on-mobile, music applications, portals and user interfaces for enhanced browsing ergonomics. --George White
BelAir
Kanata, Ontario, wireless equipment developer BelAir Networks Inc. raised $17.5 million in a fifth round of debt and equity projected to take the company to positive cash flow in the second half of 2008. The five-year-old company landed the government-backed Export Development Canada as lead investor, joining previous investors Ventures West Management Inc. of Vancouver, British Columbia, Seattle's Trilogy Equity Partners, Comcast Interactive Capital of Philadelphia, McLean Watson Capital of Toronto, T-Mobile Venture Fund of Germany, New York-based Panorama Capital (formerly J.P. Morgan Partners), MMV Financial and VenGrowth Capital Partners Inc., both of Toronto, and BDC Venture Capital of Montreal, to bring total equity funding to $78.9 million. The round also brings in $5 million in debt funding from Toronto-based Wellington Financial, and will fund working capital and expansion of sales and marketing efforts in several wireless markets. The company makes equipment for wireless mesh networks, which feature a cooperative communication infrastructure between a massive number of individual wireless transceivers. -- Clifford Carlsen
Semiconductors
GainSpan
Sunnyvale, Calif., Intel Corp. spinoff GainSpan Corp. landed $20 million in a second round of venture capital to move into volume production of extremely low power WiFi chips the company recently launched in the fast-growing industrial sensor market. Opus Capital of Menlo Park, Calif., led the deal, which includes previous investors Intel Capital of Santa Clara, Calif., New Venture Partners of Murray Hill, N.J., OVP Venture Partners of Portland, Ore. and Sigma Partners of Menlo Park, which initially invested $1.5 million to spin the company out of Intel in September 2006. The new investment is positioned to fully fund the company to positive cash flow as it expands marketing of chip sets and software for a wide range of commercial and industrial applications. -- Clifford Carlsen
Internet
PlayFirst
PlayFirst Inc. of San Francisco has raised $16.5 million in Series C funding to expand to help people goof off on computers, mobile devices and now social networks. New investor DCM of Menlo Park, Calif., led the round, joined by returning investors Rustic Canyon Partners of Santa Monica, Calif., Trinity Ventures and Mayfield Fund, both of Menlo Park. (Rustic Canyon Partners is an investor in The Deal LLC). Founded in 2004, Playfirst now has $26.5 million in venture capital under its belt. The company's first round consisted of a $5 million from Trinity Ventures and Mayfield in September 2004; followed by a $5 million Series B led by Rustic Canyon in January 2006. The San Francisco-based developer of casual games like Diner Dash also announced a partnership with RockYou!, a publisher of applications and widgets on the web, for a joint initiative to distribute the game Wedding Dash, on social networking sites beginning with Facebook.
Kango
Web 2.0 travel startup Kango of Palo Alto, Calif. has secured a $4 million from Shasta Ventures of Menlo Park and is launching the beta version of its site. Kango aims to help travelers create a better vacation by providing tools that aggregate and organize the many travel community and review sites on the Internet into one place. The company claims to found and analyzed over 20 million traveler opinions from more than 1,000 sites across the Web. Founded in 2006, te service will use natural language analysis and travel-specific term mapping to deliver reliable, relevant recommendations based on consumers' exact requirements and preferences.
Energy
Validus
Validus DC Systems, a provider of DC power infrastructure for datacenters and telecommunication facilities, has closed a $10 million first round of venture funding that will let to launch its initial product. The Brookfield, Conn., company's first round was led by Oak Hill Venture Partners of Menlo Park, Calif. The company plans to use the round's proceeds to speed the commercial deployments of its power infrastructure technology for datacenters that it claims improve energy efficiency by up to 40%, compared with traditional AC-power infrastructures. Validus received $4 million in seed capital in 2002 from Data Support Associates, Inc. to start the company and begin development of the end-to-end DC-power technology for data centers. Data Support Associates is a company that was co-founded by Validus' founder and CEO, Rudy Kraus. Validus' technology was developed over the last 5 years in partnership with Dr. Marcel Gaudreau, the former head of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
Software
Second Wind
Second Wind Inc. of Somerville, Mass., has secured $4 million in second round financing from Good Energies of New York. Second Wind is a provider of electronics and software for the utility-scale wind energy industry. The company's lead product TritonT Sonic Wind Profiler uses sodar technology for wind assessment to capture accurate wind data up to 200 meters away without being attended or requiring any expert analysis. The proceeds will be used to launch and rollout the Triton sonic wind profiler.
Pharmaceuticals
Innocoll
Specialty pharmaceutical company Innocoll Inc. of Ashburn, Va. has received a $30 million convertible preferred stock equity financing led by Camulos Capital LP of Stamford, Conn., together with NewSmith Asset Management LLP and Morgan Stanley & Co Inc., both of New York. Existing shareholders, Rolf and William Schmidt, also converted existing loans totaling about $16 million into convertible preferred stock. The financing will be used to fund a Phase 2 and Phase 3 clinical trials for Innocoll's lead product development programs, payment of financing fees, and general corporate purposes. Innocoll is developing biodegradable surgical implants and topically applied healthcare products.
Deltanoid
Madison, Wis.-based Deltanoid Pharmaceuticals has completed a $12 million financing that will be used to advance therapies for the treatment of renal disease.
The company has received a total of $16 million in venture capital to date. The current round was led by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, joined by Mason Wells of Milwaukee, Venture Investors of Madison, the company's founders, and angel investors. Established in 2001 to advance the development of vitamin D compounds licensed from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Deltanoid is developing a portfolio of products for diseases where vitamin D compounds have proven to be effective, including renal osteodystrophy, psoriasis, and osteoporosis.
Biotech
Ocimum Bio
Hyderabad, India-based Ocimum Biosolutions has raised a $17 million Series B round from Hyderabad-based Kubera Cross Border Fund. The investment gives KUBC an equity stake of about 35% of the company. Ocimum Biosolutions also closed the acquisition of the genomics division of Gene Logic and will retain the Gene Logic name and continue to service customers from Gaithersburg, Md. The Gene Logic division was acquired for $10 million. Ocimum provides genomic products and services with a focus on BioIT, BioMolecules, and BioResearch.
LineaGen
Salt Lake City biotech LineaGen Inc. has launched with $5.8 million in Series A funding. The round was led by vSpring Capital of Salt Lake City and Sanderling Biomedical Ventures, of San Mateo, Calif. joined by Mesa Verde Venture Partners of San Diego. The capital will be used to establish a molecular diagnostic commercialization facility where diagnostic tools for the advancement of personalized healthcare will be developed. The company will be studying the genetics, diagnosis and targeted treatment of disorders and diseases, including: autism, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. LineaGen's will use a biomarker discovery research platform developed at the University of Utah to identify disease-related genes.
Healthcare
Verilogue
Verilogue LLC of Fort Washington, Pa., has received $4 million in financing from Edison Venture Fund of Lawrenceville, N.J. The company is a provider of technology for 'point of practice' pharmaceutical market research. Verilogue's technology captures real-time physician-patient conversations and feeds them into a nationwide database of recorded interactions to provide feedback on specific medicines, competitive positioning and communication materials for pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Verilogue also plans to utilize the funds for growth in marketing and sales.
Venture firms
Founders Fund
San Francisco venture capital firm Founders Fund, has closed its second vehicle with $220 million. The new fund, Founders Fund II, will be invested in roughly 15-20 early-stage startup companies. The fund is the first institutional money raised by the Founders Fund, and is four-times the size of the $50 million prior fund, which was raised from personal investments by the managing partners and individual outside investors. Portfolio companies in the first fund include Facebook and Geni.
Continue reading below
