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June 24, 2008 MENLO PARK -- Jaxtr, which helps users make calls on the Web, has announced the completion of $10 million in Series B financing, a round led by new investor Lehman Brothers Venture Partners. "Jaxtr's market potential is extraordinarily large as the company is able to acquire millions of customers per month without spending any money on marketing. And it succeeded in monetizing its offering within 16 months of launch through two revenue streams, first advertising and now premium services," said Ben Boyer, partner at Lehman Brothers. The company launched its first consumer service in March 2007, and jaxtr is currently used by more than 10 million users in 220 countries. Jaxtr links your phone to the Web, so you can hear from callers worldwide while keeping your existing phone number private and so you can call people anywhere in the world directly from your mobile without paying expensive international toll charges. Jaxtr works with any phone, mobile or landline. And no download is required - even if calls are initiated from a mobile phone. June 17, 2008 PALO ALTO -- LinkedIn, a business social networking site, has scored a huge $53 million investment, giving the company a $1 billion valuation. Lead investor is Bain Capital Ventures with additional money from current investors Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Greylock Partners. The site is devoted to business networking and generates revenue from advertising and premium subscriptions. LinkedIn was first launched in 2003. May 27, 2008 MENLO PARK -- OPENLANE, Inc., the leading online auction company in North America for automotive dealers to buy and sell wholesale vehicles, announced the company has closed a $25 million funding round led by Meritech Capital Partners. Also participating in the round were existing investors August Capital, RPM Ventures, and Zilkha Venture Partners. The funds will be used to help the Company scale in line with rising demand for its online wholesale auction, while continuing to maintain high levels of customer service and product innovation. OPENLANE sold over 270,000 vehicles online in 2007, valued at over $4 billion and generating in excess of $60 million in revenues. This represented revenue growth of approximately 60 percent compared to the prior year. The Company experienced continued strong growth in the first quarter of 2008. Revenues for the first quarter of 2008 were approximately 65 percent higher than the first quarter of 2007. "We chose to raise a strategic round of funding to pursue important initiatives and continue to nurture our position as an industry leader," said Roger Butterwick, president and CEO of OPENLANE. "Our business model, coupled with a historically strong used vehicle category, affords us a great opportunity to provide innovative market-driven services during challenging macro-economic climates." Since launching in 1999, OPENLANE has been a pioneer in online auctions for the wholesale used car market, and the Company's online wholesale auctions are the destination of choice for more than 35,000 dealers in the US and Canada. The Company recently changed its name from ATC to OPENLANE to better reflect its vision - to provide dealers and sellers with the freedom to select from a broad inventory of vehicles and support services, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. May 14, 2008 OAKLAND -- BrightSource Energy, Inc., developer of utility-scale solar energy projects, has secured $115 million in additional corporate funding from its Series C round of financing, bringing the total the company has raised to date to over $160 million. These additional funds will enable the company to accelerate its plans to deliver utility-grade solar power at a time when many utilities are searching for reliable sources of renewable energy. VantagePoint Venture Partners, the company's initial investor, played a major role in forming the syndicate, which includes Google.org, BP Alternative Energy, StatoilHydro Venture and Black River. All of the company's existing investors, including Morgan Stanley, DBL Investors (formerly a subsidiary of JP Morgan), Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Chevron Technology Ventures participated in the round. "The quality of the investors in this round of financing, coupled with increased support from our earlier investors, underscores the confidence that major strategic players have in our ability to reliably generate clean, cost-effective, utility-scale solar power," said John Woolard, Chief Executive Officer of BrightSource. "We believe in the transformational role of solar energy, and that the broad reach of our new investors will enable us to accelerate the growth of solar thermal into a mainstream energy source." "With its unique ability to reliably produce superheated steam at efficient high temperatures, our power tower technology is the strongest commercially viable approach to solar energy," said Arnold Goldman, Chairman and Founder, BrightSource Energy, Inc. and Luz II Ltd. "Operating more efficiently than older solar thermal methods, and costing much less to build, our technology will change the way utilities generate electricity." In March 2008, BrightSource entered into a series of power purchase agreements with PG&E for up to 900MW of electricity. BrightSource is currently developing a number of solar power plants in the Mojave Desert of Southern California, with construction of the first plant planned to start in 2009. SAN JOSE AND NUREMBERG, GERMANY -- CoreOptics Inc., a leading designer and manufacturer of 10/40/100 Gbps optical networking subsystems, announced the closure of a $25 million round of financing from existing investors, bringing the company s total funding to date to more than $90 million. "We have more than 10,000 units of our 10G transponders with MLSE functionality currently deployed, with over five global tier-1 network operators around the world. This achievement clearly illustrates the value of our technology in creating open, distortion tolerant infrastructure for 10G/40 Gbps optical networks today and 100G to come" said Hamid Arabzadeh, CoreOptics Chairman of the board, President and CEO. "This round of funding will enable us to complete our near-term product development programs, achieve our manufacturing ramp targets, expedite our global sales team expansion and see us through to the next phase of the company s evolution to establish CoreOptics as the global leader in distortion tolerant 10G/40G and 100G optical subsystems. CoreOptics works in close cooperation with all major carriers and optical system vendors around the world to identify the most cost effective and high performance solutions to mitigate distortion impairments. The company has established market leadership in providing highly advanced equalization solutions based on Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimator (MLSE) electronic signal processing algorithm at 10 Gbps. The company s next-generation MLSE-2 technology will enable systems vendors and their carrier customers to benefit from much higher Chromatics Dispersion (CD) and Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD) mitigation capabilities, and to set the physical layer of the optical networks for cost effective deployment of 40 and 100 Gbps services. May 6, 2008 SAN JOSE -- Xactly Corporation, a developer of on-demand sales performance management, announced it has raised $30 million in additional capital to fund continued business growth. The new $30 million in capital includes a round of equity and a revolving credit facility. "This financing represents a significant tipping point for Xactly, giving us the war chest we need to further capture market share and continue to dominate the SPM space," said Christopher Cabrera, president and CEO of Xactly Corporation. "We're pleased with the steadfast support from our existing investors and the participation from new investors Glynn Capital Management and Cheyenne Partners. In addition to fueling our growth in North America and expansion into EMEA, the new funding will enable us to deliver key new products as outlined in our 18-month product roadmap, culminating in the market's most comprehensive suite of on-demand sales performance management solutions available from a single vendor." Xactly will use the new funds to expand its footprint in North America and EMEA, and further invest in sales and marketing. The capital will also be used to continue advancing the SPM market with execution and delivery against the on-demand product roadmap Xactly debuted in 2007. To that end, the company will deliver on key new SPM applications, including robust analytics and a module for quota and territory management by the end of 2008. April 29, 2008 SUNNYVALE -- InvenSense, a leading provider of motion sensing solutions for mobile consumer applications, said it has secured $19 million dollars in Series C venture capital financing. The round was led by new investor Sierra Ventures, with participation from previous investors Artiman Ventures, Partech International and Qualcomm Ventures. Several strategic investors also participated in the Series C investment round including Foxconn, Inventec Appliances Corp, both from Taiwan; Skylake Ventures from Korea; DoCoMo Capital, a wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary of NTT DoCoMo Japan, and VentureTech Alliance (whose majority LP is TSMC). Ben Yu, managing director at Sierra Ventures, will join InvenSense's board of directors. The round will bring InvenSense's total funding to date to $38 million. InvenSense will use the funds to expand sales operations to support new customers and bring a new family of the world's first integrated motion sensing solutions based on multi-axis gyroscopes and accelerometers with embedded intelligence. These products address the fast-growing need for motion sensors in portable consumer electronics markets that will fuel a host of innovations in next generation applications such as 3D-games and gesture-enabled mobile phones. "InvenSense has already demonstrated a clear leadership position in mass production of very advanced MEMS motion sensing solutions with wide acceptance by many major consumer electronics companies," said Ben Yu, managing director, Sierra Ventures. "We are excited about the enormous market potential for InvenSense's upcoming, innovative solutions and are convinced that InvenSense will be the dominant provider of a new generation of motion sensors for the burgeoning consumer handheld market." "Sierra Ventures was the ideal partner to lead this round
for us, and we are pleased with participation by a high quality
list of Asian strategic investors. We have now solidified our
commitment to Asia and to some of the largest consumer electronic
companies in the world," said Steven Nasiri, chief
executive officer and founder of InvenSense. "This new capital
will help InvenSense continue to lead the way in developing the
most innovative and cost effective motion sensing solutions with
integrated gyroscopes, accelerometers, and embedded intelligence
and enable a new generation of applications for gaming, mobile
phones, 3D-remote controls, digital cameras and personal navigation
devices." April 15, 2008 SAUSALITO -- Federated Media Publishing (FM) announced that it has received a $50 million minority investment from Oak Investment Partners, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, CA. Founded in 2005, FM represents more than 125 conversational media entrepreneurs who run more than 150 of the world's most respected websites, blogs, and social networking applications. The company became profitable in the third quarter of 2007. "Federated Media has a proven, profitable business model with some of the industry's most knowledgeable people at the helm," said Fred Harman, general partner at Oak, who will be joining the FM board of directors. "The company has shown clear leadership in the emerging conversational media ecosystem. FM represents some of the best publisher and advertiser content on the Web, and with productive industry relationships, the company is poised to do amazing things going forward." With expertise in custom, integrated conversational marketing campaigns, FM has developed deep and long-term relationships with leading brand marketers and advertising agencies. Over the last three years, the company has expanded beyond its technology roots into verticals including parenting, business & marketing, media & entertainment, video gaming, graphics arts, automotive and more. "We're proud to bring Oak on board as major investor," said John Battelle, founder and CEO of Federated Media. "The Oak team understands the media business and has relationships within the media and Internet industries that will benefit FM with insights from Silicon Valley as well as Madison Avenue. Oak gets it, and we couldn't have picked a better partner." FM's full portfolio of digital media brands includes web favorites such as Boing Boing, Ars Technica, Ask A Ninja, Digg, Dooce, Confessions of a Pioneer Woman and NOTCOT, as well as social networking applications including Graffiti Wall (in Facebook, Hi5, MySpace and other social networks), Watercooler (in Facebook, Bebo and others) and many more. FM is expanding its portfolio and has just this year brought on diverse sites such as Silicon Alley Insider, Destructoid and Buzzine. FM also manages sponsorship programs for a roster of events such as the twice-annual Conversational Marketing Summit and Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival. April 2, 2008 CUPERTINO -- ScaleMP, a provider of virtualization solutions for high-end computing, announced that it has received $8 million in new venture funding, bringing the total raised to $26 million. Participation in this up-round funding included all of the existing investors: Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, TL Ventures, and ABS Ventures. "We are proud of the continued commitment our investors have showed us. This new round of funding will be utilized to broaden our product offerings and expand our sales channels," said Shai Fultheim, founder and CEO of ScaleMP. "Through our worldwide network of partners, systems based on our technology are already installed around the world, serving the Global 5000 customers in verticals such as manufacturing, energy, life-sciences, and financial services." The ScaleMP aggregation technology allows a server to expand outside a single system boundary, addressing growing end-user requirements for large memory systems or systems with high-core count. The vSMP Foundation aggregation platform is a software-only solution that eliminates the need for extensive R&D or proprietary hardware components in developing high-end x86 systems, and reduces overall end-user system cost and operational expenditures. It utilizes up to sixteen x86 systems to create a single shared-memory system with 4 to 32 processors (128 cores) and up to 1 TB of RAM, providing significantly better price/performance compared to traditional SMP systems and lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) compared to clusters. SAN FRANCISCO -- Reality Digital, a developer of brand-focused social media solutions for businesses, announced the closing of $6.3 million in its Series B round of venture funding from OpenView Venture Partners. Reality Digital provides an on-demand platform that enables businesses to add cutting edge video sharing, social media and networking features, as well as business tools to their digital media initiatives. The company's flagship product, the Reality Digital Opus™platform, applies a software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model that can be rapidly launched as either a brand new Web environment, or within an existing Web domain to allow users to upload, manage and share digital video, audio and images online. Reality Digital provides companies with the opportunity to establish a dialog and foster a more intimate relationship with their customers. The approach improves brand awareness, user loyalty, customer retention and site "stickiness," as well as positively affecting advertising revenues. Reality Digital customers include some of the leading players in media, publishing, and online entertainment, including MTV Networks, ITV Local and Lonely Planet. The new funds will be used to capitalize on the exponential growth of the Web video and social media market and help the company expand in the United States and Europe. March 26, 2008 SAN JOSE -- Altierre Corp., a provider of wireless dynamic pricing solutions for retailers, announced the completion of a $22 million Series C round led by The Galleon Group. Previous Altierre investors ATA Ventures, the D. E. Shaw group, Dupont Capital Management and Labrador Ventures also participated in the round. The Series C funding will enable the rapid expansion of Altierre's production and manufacturing in anticipation of multiple implementations with major retail chains. Altierre estimates that more than $40 billion is spent annually worldwide implementing price changes in the food, drug and mass retail segments, including $10 billion by the U.S. supermarket industry alone. With a fully functioning, end-to-end solution, the Company is now executing its breakout strategy to directly address this vast opportunity. Altierre has been co-developing its wireless dynamic pricing solution with several of the United States' top 10 grocery chains under signed agreements. The Company has attracted $39 million in funding from premier venture investors in the past 12 months, and has raised a total of $52 million to date. March 17, 2008 SAN JOSE -- eASIC Corporation, a provider of zero mask-charge ASIC chips, has landed $48 million in late stage financing. The financing round was lead by Advanced Equities Incorporated. Also participating in the round were previous investors Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Crescendo Ventures and Evergreen Venture Partners. The eASIC Chief Financial Officer, Craig Klosterman, also invested in this round. eASIC's unique, patented silicon technology offers chip designers a family of zero dollar mask charge, no-minimum-order ASIC devices combined with a rapid design cycle and only a four-week silicon turn-around time. eASIC has design wins and customers in a wide variety of applications such as portable video devices, cell phones, wireless basestations, routers, gateways, video surveillance, digital displays plus others. "Khosla Ventures was an early investor in eASIC and is delighted to see the promise of this disruptive technology become a reality. eASIC is ushering in a new era of affordable silicon customization," said Vinod Khosla, Founder and General Partner, Khosla Ventures. "We are looking forward to the next stage of this company and the very exciting impact that it will have in the traditional custom logic market." "We are pleased to add Advanced Equities to the visionary investors that were able to accurately predict the inflection point in the $80B custom logic market, where costs have become prohibitive to mass silicon customization," said Ronnie Vasishta, President and CEO of eASIC Corporation. "Our Nextreme product is winning designs in the traditional standard cell ASIC, the Application Specific Standard Product (ASSP) and the FPGA markets. Our customers range from large multi-nationals to small startups. We are also encouraged to see Craig Klosterman invest, as he has a track record of picking winning companies." SAN JOSE -- LogLogic, the log management leader, has secured an investment from SAP Ventures, the venture capital arm of SAP AG, the world's leading provider of business software solutions. SAP Ventures joins Series D investors Focus Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Telesoft Partners, Worldview Technology Partners, Invesco Private Capital and others in the latest investment round, which now totals $15 million. LogLogic's log management platform and compliance applications improve the security, availability and compliance of heterogeneous IT environments. Log data records hold a complete audit trail of user and system activity. While access control systems, such as the SAP GRC Access Control system, can tell who should have access or authority to do what, log data shows explicitly who is doing what. Log management solutions act as the digital surveillance camera of the virtual enterprise and can be a compensating control before, during or after the deployment of segregation of duties (SoD) controls. "SAP Ventures' investment will not only help us grow our leadership position in the industry, but we will also benefit from SAP Ventures introductions to the broader SAP ecosystem," said Pat Sueltz, CEO of LogLogic. "SAP already delivers a critical piece to the compliance and fraud prevention puzzle. We are looking to increase value for shared customers by adding visibility and control over actual user and system activities and further automate the compliance process." SAN FRANCISCO -- Zivity, an adult social network, has raised $7 million in Series B financing from venture capital firms BlueRun Ventures and Founders Fund. Zivity.com is a community-powered showcase promoting female beauty and expression through professional-quality photography. Subscribers to Zivity pay $10 per month and distribute 40 percent of their subscription fee to the participating models and photographers via Zivity's innovative dollar-backed voting system. Each vote cast delivers cash to the content creators. "We think of Zivity as the HBO of the Internet," said Scott Banister, chairman of Zivity. "Unlike free social networks and other user-generated content platforms underwritten by advertisers, our subscription-based business model offers us real freedom to publish uncensored content and to pay our content producers generously. We believe consumers from all over the world will pay $10 a month for online freedom." Together with the $1 million announced in August, this brings the total capital raised by Zivity to $8 million. The new capital will be used to bolster the company's rapid growth with additional hires and expanded infrastructure. The site is currently in private beta and available by invitation only. An open public launch is scheduled for 2009. March 8, 2008 PALO ALTO -- Silicon Valley's top venture capital firm -- Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers -- is launching a $100 million venture called iFund to help new ideas and products developed for Apple's iPhone and iTouch platform. The iFund is agnostic to size and stage of investment and will invest in companies building applications, services and components. Focus areas include location based services, social networking, mCommerce (including advertising and payments), communication, and entertainment. "A revolutionary new platform is a rare and prized opportunity for entrepreneurs, and that's exactly what Apple has created with iPhone and iPod touch," said John Doerr, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. "We think several significant new companies will emerge as this new platform evolves, and the iFund will empower them to realize their full potential." "Developers are already bursting with ideas for the iPhone and iPod touch, and now they have the chance to turn those ideas into great companies with the help of world-class venture capitalists," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We can't wait to start working with Kleiner Perkins and the companies they fund through this new initiative." The iFund will be managed by KPCB Partner Matt Murphy in collaboration with partners Chi-Hua Chien, John Doerr, Bill Joy, Randy Komisar, Ellen Pao and Ted Schlein. Apple will provide KPCB with market insight and support. February 29, 2008 SUNNYVALE -- Proofpoint has something to prove!!! The company, a leading provider of unified email security and data loss prevention solutions, has closed a $28 million financing round, led by new investor DAG Ventures. All previous investors - including Benchmark Capital; Bridgescale Partners; Inventures Group; JAFCO Ventures; Meritech Capital Partners; Mohr, Davidow Ventures and RRE Ventures - also participated in this round, bringing Proofpoint's total raised capital to more than $86 million. The funds will be used to accelerate Proofpoint's continued global expansion, customer acquisition and product development initiatives. "Proofpoint has tripled its customer base since its last financing and is now poised to accelerate growth through rapid worldwide expansion," said Gary Steele, president and CEO of Proofpoint, Inc. "This latest round of funding will help Proofpoint meet growing global demand for email and data security solutions, strengthen our distribution channels and bring even more innovative products to market." Proofpoint is the email security and DLP solution of choice for a rapidly growing number of enterprises, universities and government organizations worldwide, helping them stop spam, protect against email viruses and prevent leaks of confidential information via email and other network protocols. The company recently concluded its best year ever, growing
revenue by more than 50% annually over 2006, fueled by new product
introductions including the Proofpoint on Demand service, accelerating
competitive displacements and an extraordinary customer renewal
rate of more than 98%. February 15, 2008 CUPERTINO -- SugarCRM, a leading provider of commercial open source customer relationship management (CRM) software, announced the completion of a $20 million round of financing led by New Enterprise Associates, bringing total funding to $46 million. Existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Walden International also joined the round. SugarCRM will use the proceeds to fund continued growth in the CRM market, including research and development and global expansion, particularly in Europe and Asia. "This additional funding will allow SugarCRM to accelerate its goal of moving the CRM market from a proprietary lock-in model to an open, value-based model by delivering the most modern, open, flexible CRM platform in the industry," said John Roberts, CEO and Co-Founder, SugarCRM. Since its founding in 2004, SugarCRM has seen global adoption
of its commercial open source CRM products, with over four million
downloads, 470 product extensions, 75 language translations,
more than 60,000 community members, over 12,000 registered developers,
and a customer base of nearly 3,000 commercial accounts. The
company has over 150 employees. MOUNTAIN VIEW -- -PolyRemedy, Inc., manufacturer of a robotic system for the delivery of nano-material based wound dressings at the point-of-care, has closed a $25 million investment from several venture capital firms. The Series B financing was co-led by Advanced Technology Ventures (ATV) and IDG Ventures Boston and included participation from Series A investor, MedVenture Associates and new investor Harris & Harris Group, Inc. New York. PolyRemedy was founded by Oleg Siniaguine, Ph.D., the company's Chief Technology Officer and a member of its board of directors. Tapping into his deep micro-and nano technology and robotic industry knowledge, Dr. Siniaguine's vision was to utilize an innovative approach to automate the wound care dressing fabrication process at the point of care. The PolyRemedy system enables clinicians to quickly and cost-effectively provide custom-made, unit of use wound dressings to patients with chronic wounds such as diabetic ulcers and will enable the capture and monitoring of patient data to refine clinical protocols, control costs and demonstrate evidence-based improvements in wound heal rates over time. January 29, 2008 SAN FRANCISCO -- Quantcast announced that it has closed a Series B financing round with Founders Fund and Polaris Venture Partners. The financing provides the company with $20 million in new capital which will be used to support burgeoning demand for its direct-measurement audience service and related solutions. Quantcast's solutions enable buyers and sellers of online
media to benefit from the promise of addressable, audience-based
advertising. To date, over 20,000 publishers, representing millions of unique web destinations, have joined the Quantified Publisher program. Adoption of the program is accelerating and many brand name media organizations participate, including Fox, CBS, Belo Corporation, AccuWeather, Slide, and IDG. SAN FRANCISCO -- Slide.com, a developer of widgets that are popular on social websites, has reportedly received a $50 million financing round and valuing the company at $500 million. Investors include T. Rowe Price and Fidelity, two of the largest mutual fund companies in the nation. Previous investors in Slide have included Khosla Ventures, BlueRun Ventures, Founders Fund and the Mayfield Fund. January 21, 2008 SANTA CLARA -- Silver Peak Systems Inc., a leading provider of scalable Wide Area Network (WAN) acceleration solutions, announced that it has secured $21 million in series D funding, bringing the total investment in the company to $63 million. The latest round of funding includes investments from Artis Capital Management, Benchmark Capital, Duff Ackerman and Goodrich LLC, Greylock Partners, J. & W. Seligman & Co, and Pinnacle Ventures. The new funding will provide working capital to expand all areas of the company's global business, including engineering, sales, marketing and support. "WAN acceleration is essential to the success of a variety of key IT initiatives, from server centralization and virtualization to data backup and recovery," said Rick Tinsley, president and chief executive officer of Silver Peak. "As data volumes increase, so to does the demand for a scalable WAN acceleration solution. The latest financial investment, coupled with the company's unique technology, puts Silver Peak in an ideal position to capitalize on this burgeoning market." REDWOOD CITY -- Anagran, the leading provider of high capacity flow management technology and products, has closed a $12 millio Series C round of funding. Each of the company's original venture capital investors invested in this latest round. The funding will be used primarily to expand the company's sales presence in North America and EMEA. Anagran produces high capacity flow management products developed from the ground up for streaming and interactive applications that eliminate congestion to instantly boost the end-to-end performance and capacity of IP networks. In the past, enterprises and service providers have been forced to purchase more transmission capacity, router ports, and WAN optimization or DPI devices in an attempt to keep up with the growth in network traffic. However, the nature and mix of applications and resulting traffic volume have changed dramatically in just the past few years, with congestion quickly recurring even after purchasing router upgrades and WAN optimization equipment. The common practice of simply buying more networking gear means companies are struggling to economically keep pace with today's rich mix of streaming and on-demand video, voice, and interactive data. "Anagran is the only company that can address the urgent economic need for a simple, complementary networking device that enhances the performance of every existing device in the network, whether it's a router, network optimization box or DPI device," said Kim Niederman, president and CEO of Anagran. "Our conversations with Fortune 1000 companies have wholeheartedly validated that companies don't want to rip out existing networks, but they do need to economically scale as their network traffic grows and changes. We allow just that, with a device that can instantly take a standard IP network and transform it into a world-class application delivery platform. This new round allows us to continue to help companies transform their networks." January 15, 2008 REDWOOD CITY -- NComputing, a leading provider of desktop virtualization software and hardware, has secured $28 million in a Series B round of financing. The funds will be used to expand sales and operations in key countries where affordable computing is out of reach for many schools, businesses and governments. The funds will also be used to support ongoing research and development into the company's patented virtual computing technology that enables computing access for as little as $70 per user. The funding round was led by Menlo Ventures with participation from existing investors Scale Venture Partners and Korea's Daehong Technew Corporation. "This important round of funding will help NComputing expand our global reach and will help the company meet the growing demand for our virtual computing technology in new and existing markets," said Stephen Dukker, Chairman & CEO of NComputing. "The investment demonstrates that NComputing has a powerful technology and business model for bringing affordable computing to the next billion users around the world." NComputing has offices in Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Korea, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States and distributes products to over 70 countries. SUNNYVALE -- Dune Networks, a provider of networking devices for Metro Ethernet, Enterprise and Data Center platforms, announced that it recently closed a $12 million series B investment round led by U.S. Venture Partners. All of Dune's existing investors; Alta Berkeley Ventures, Aurum Ventures, Cipio Partners, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Pitango Venture Capital and its strategic investors participated in the financing round. This additional funding brings the total amount of funding raised to date to $45 million. The new funding is to be used to accelerate development of new product lines while expanding sales and support of existing customers. "Dune welcomes USVP's leading role in our latest round of financing, and is grateful for the continued confidence of our existing investors," said Dune Networks' CEO, Eyal Dagan. "We strengthen our financial position to accommodate the rapid increase of customer's projects, while accelerating the development of new devices." January 4, 2008 SAN FRANCISCO and NEW YORK -- Merlin Securities, a broker dealer specializing in technology driven prime brokerage services, announced that Sequoia Capital has made a $20 million investment in an expansion round of financing. The investment by Sequoia Capital comes after a year of tremendous growth and recognition for Merlin Securities. In 2007, Merlin was ranked the #1 Prime Broker in surveys of hedge fund managers including the Global Custodian Magazine Survey of Prime Brokers and Institutional Investor's Alpha Awards. "The investment by Sequoia Capital marks a significant milestone in the evolution of Merlin Securities," said Stephan P. Vermut, Managing Partner of Merlin Securities. "We formed Merlin with a vision of the future of prime brokerage and services to investment managers. The investment by Sequoia Capital validates that vision and gives us the resources to continue to pursue it. We are very excited to be able to leverage their knowledge and expertise to build our business. We could not have asked for a better partner." Founded by Stephan Vermut, the former Founder, President and CEO of Bank of America Prime Brokerage, Merlin Securities provides the hedge fund manager with the most advanced and user-friendly transparency tools. Merlin's award winning products include multi-prime, multi-currency, attribution (absolute and relative) and risk solutions for investment managers. Merlin currently boasts over 200 hedge fund clients globally and has exhibited over 100% revenue growth year over year since inception in 2004. Merlin's technology has won several industry awards and was named an InfoWorld 100 company in 2006. December 15, 2007 MOUNTAIN VIEW -- Kosmix announced a $10 million investment led by new investor DAG Ventures with additional participation from current investors, Accel and Lightspeed, giving it a strong cash position to accelerate growth in the marketplace. Kosmix's health consumer site, www.righthealth.com, is now the sixth most visited health site on Hitwise and receives over 3.9 million unique visitors a month according to Quantcast, marking a 56 percent increase since its public launch in the fall. In addition, Kosmix's newly released consumer auto site, www.rightautos.com, attracts more than two million unique visitors a month, making it one of the most popular online auto sites in the market. "Today, there is an overwhelmingly strong demand to deliver content that is relevant to users and we are witnessing this daily on our two consumer sites: RightHealth and RightAutos," said Venky Harinarayan, co-founder of Kosmix. "The new funding represents a strategic asset for us as we continue to invest in people, technology and distribution to achieve our vision of creating the start page for every topic on the Web." The core of Kosmix's technology is a sophisticated algorithm-based categorization engine that has been in development for three years. The technology combs billions of Web pages and structured data points to aggregate, categorize, and return the most targeted content to users. By generating every page algorithmically, Kosmix automatically creates rich and relevant home pages for any topic and scales seamlessly as the Web grows. SAN FRANCISCO -- Jobvite, a provider of recruitment solutions, announced the completion of a $7.2 million Series A financing led by CMEA Ventures. The company will use the investment to expand product development, marketing and sales efforts. Jim Watson, Managing Director, and Saad Khan, Partner, of CMEA join the company's Board of Directors. Jobvite provides an on-demand recruitment application that manages the entire recruiting and hiring process using Web 2.0 features. Social networking, collaboration and Outlook integration engage all employees productively in their hiring tasks. The Software as a Service application solves the problem of coordinating hiring activities and data across departments, so companies can identify and hire the best people. Jobvite customers include TiVo, Infinera, SupportSoft, Mattson Technology and Tellme Networks. "To win the war for talent, companies need to engage all of their employees in recruiting," said Jesper Schultz, Chief Executive Officer of Jobvite. "Our next generation solution instantly allows all employees to be involved. Our customers use Jobvite as a strategic advantage to hire the best people." December 7, 2007 PALO ALTO -- Pelikan Technologies, Inc., a leading developer of innovative hand-held medical diagnostic and monitoring devices, announced the closing of a $69,000,000 Series F Preferred Stock equity financing led by Clarus Ventures LLC. Also participating in the financing are new as well as current Pelikan investors, including HBM BioVentures Ltd, Global Life Science Ventures, Mannheim Holdings LLC and Bio*One Capital. Dennis Henner, Ph.D., a managing director at Clarus Ventures, has joined Pelikan's Board of Directors in connection with this financing. UBS Investment Bank acted as sole placement agent for Pelikan for this private placement. In addition to the Equity Financing the Company has received pre approval for a $20,000,000 venture loan facility from General Electric Capital Corporation and Oxford Finance Corporation. The total financing including this venture loan facility is $89,000,000. Pelikan intends to use a portion of the proceeds from this financing to support the company's near-term commercialization of the FDA-approved Pelikan Sun electronic lancing device. After a successful launch of the Pelikan Sun in Australia in October, and in Europe in November, the company will launch the device in the U.S. during the first quarter of 2008. In addition, the company will use the proceeds to complete development of its next-generation, fully-integrated blood glucose system and support that product's anticipated 2008 launch, as well as to fund research and development for future Pelikan products. CUPERTINO -- TuVox, a developer of speech applications for phone calls, has announced that it has closed $20 million of financing. This additional capital provides TuVox the ability to accelerate expansion of its core business and invest in new areas of growth. The financing included new investor Glynn Capital Management and the continued participation of all of TuVox's institutional investors, including Norwest Venture Partners, Foundation Capital, Granite Ventures, and Adobe Ventures. This expansion capital will be used to accelerate existing and new initiatives to further TuVox's growth, and comes on the heels of another record period for the company. New TuVox customers and deployments over the past six months include: - AMC Theatres, the second largest theater chain in North
America, "We are very pleased to have Glynn Capital Management join the TuVox team" said Larry Miller, TuVox President and CEO. "This is an exciting period for TuVox, as our core business continues to grow rapidly, providing further opportunity to pursue new areas of expansion for the company. Having achieved positive cash flow, this new financing will take us to the next level as we continue to explore and capitalize on opportunities to expand our market presence globally and broaden our on demand offerings with products that will absolutely change the way companies do business with their customers." CUPERTINO -- Adomo, Inc., a provider of flexible, resilient Unified Messaging solutions for large enterprises, announced the completion of a $15 million Series A-1 funding round led by Menlo Ventures and Storm Ventures, both of Menlo Park, CA. The company will use these funds to aggressively expand product development, marketing and sales efforts to take full advantage of the growing market opportunity for solutions enabling telephony and data convergence in the enterprise. Adomo is 100 percent focused on Unified Messaging solutions that work on existing infrastructure, including any PBX or Microsoft Exchange server. The company's purpose-built, modular architecture distinguishes it from other solutions on the market by requiring fewer databases and no synchronization. This allows Adomo to deliver the most flexible, resilient solution at the lowest total cost of ownership. Through this unique approach, Adomo's solutions are enabling customers in financial, legal, healthcare, manufacturing and other industries to experience IPT deployments that work faster with less cost and higher reliability. As proof of its architectural excellence and innovation, Adomo was recently granted a patent by U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. "Adomo's technology is built to handle the complex environments of Fortune 5000 enterprises, whether TDM or IP based," said Mathew Frazer, President and CEO, Adomo. "This strong funding round underscores the value of Adomo's unique ability to simplify what is a very complex problem, delivering a superior messaging platform and cost advantage for our customers." December 3, 2007 SAN FRANCISCO -- AdBrite, an Internet advertising marketplace, announced $23 million in Series C venture funding. The current round includes follow-on investment by Sequoia Capital as well as new participation from DAG Ventures and Mitsui Ventures. AdBrite also announced the appointment of Peter Sealey, former Coca-Cola CMO, to the company's board of directors. In the past twelve months, AdBrite launched a real-time auction model and an expanding range of ad formats to deliver transparency and price-efficiency for online advertisers and publishers. "A steady succession of product innovations -- including BritePic, Full Page Ad, and our new Facebook App Channel -- have fueled AdBrite's rapid growth," said Ignacio Fanlo, CEO of AdBrite. "This additional funding and new board expertise will help accelerate our expansion." The current round of funding is the company's third. Sequoia Capital led AdBrite's Series A round in 2004, and was joined in 2006 by Artis Capital Management for the Series B. "We saw from the very beginning that AdBrite's unique platform could bring increased efficiency and transparency to online advertisers and publishers," said Mark Kvamme, Partner at Sequoia Capital. "We are pleased with AdBrite's progress in building the Internet's most transparent and trusted advertising marketplace." AdBrite was founded by Philip Kaplan and Gidon Wise in 2002 and is headquartered in San Francisco. Kaplan was the founder of the F'd Company website. AdBrite serves over 1 billion ad impressions per day. |