Clean Filtration Tech drinks in $3.5M for unique water treatment system

Clean Filtration Technologies, maker of a self-cleaning, maintenance-free metal membrane used to process waste water and produce clean, healthy drinking water in high volumes, has brought in $3.55 million of a targeted $7.2 million round of equity and securities, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Saratoga, Calif., the company has not disclosed any investors.

Its membrane, branded as the CFT Turboclone, is supposedly cheaper to make and install, lowering the overall cost … Continue Reading

InSite Medical raises $1.06M for epidural delivery

InSite Medical Technologies, maker of a medical device used to safely deliver epidural anesthesia during childbirth and other procedures, has just brought in $1.06 million of an expected $2.08 million round of equity, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Saratoga, Calif., the company has no information on its web site, but a Stanford newsletter reports that it also received a $100,000 award from the National Science Foundation.… Continue Reading

The Foundry snaps up $3M for new stealth startup

The Foundry has just brought in $3 million in equity to finance a stealthy new company known only as Foundry Newco XII for now, according to a filing with the SEC. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based incubator focuses almost exclusively on medical and biotech ventures, so it’s not a stretch to assume this new entity falls into that category. It is also backed by Morgenthaler Ventures, Split Rock Partners and Domain Associates.… Continue Reading

Toyota locks down lithium for hybrid batteries with new mining deal

About 75 percent of the hybrid cars on the road are built by Toyota, and it plans to double their production in 2010. In 2012, when it debuts its new plug-in Prius, it expects to be churning out a million of them. Just one problem: the lithium needed for its hybrid battery packs (pictured) is incredibly scarce. But today, the company took a big step toward a solution, sending subsidiary Toyota Tsusho to Argentina to … Continue Reading

BuyWithMe lands $5.5M to lower prices by coordinating bulk purchasing

BuyWithMe uses social networking to aggregate large groups of buyers to make purchases in bulk — thereby lowering prices at major retailers. It has just raised $5.5 million in first-round capital to scale its user base and forge more vendor partnerships. The service also sends out email alerts to users calling their attention to sales and other deals in their local areas (right now it only operates in Boston, Washington, D.C., and San Diego). Based … Continue Reading

Chegg founder's stealthy Kakai may be building gesture-based consumer device

Kakai, an incredibly secretive Santa Clara, Calif., company (even though it has more than 40 employees already), has raised $50,000 of a targeted $100,000 round of options, warrants and securities, according to a filing with the SEC.

A past TechCrunch story on the company suggests that it is building a fancy new electronic reader, and an old job listing mentioned something about a Linux-based consumer electronics product. But even more clues can be stripped from … Continue Reading

Facebook pushes developers to ask for user e-mails directly

Starting today, Facebook is pushing developers to interact with users directly through their personal e-mail. This is a big change in how applications notify users of updates or new turns in games. Users will have to explicitly provide their own contact information.

Although Facebook gave developers several months of lead time through a roadmap the company presented last fall, it’s not clear yet how much this will change virality for apps across the entire ecosystem. … Continue Reading

'Cloud labor' startup CrowdFlower raises $5M

CrowdFlower, the startup that helps companies find and manage workers for menial tasks, just announced that it has raised $5 million in a first round of institutional funding.

San Francisco-based CrowdFlower (whose chief executive, Lukas Biewald, is a friend of mine from college) is useful when you need basic tasks performed that can’t be automated by technology, such as tagging photos or categorizing the sentiments expressed in different messages on Twitter. There are a number … Continue Reading

Teens in Tech acquires teen-run microblogging startup Yazzem

In Silicon Valley, even the teenagers are wheeling and dealing. Teens in Tech, the startup that helps teens publish online, has acquired microblogging startup Yazzem.

The average age of the founders involved in this deal is probably around, uh, half my own age. Redwood City, Calif.-based Teens in Tech was founded by Daniel Brusilovsky (pictured above), now 17. Yazzem, meanwhile, was founded last year by 14-year-olds Zachary Collins and Dustin Snider. The deal will expand … Continue Reading

Tantalus pulls in $13.5M for wireless smart meter networking

Tantalus Systems, provider of networking infrastructure to wirelessly transmit energy consumption data from smart meters to utilities, has brought in $13.5 million in new equity. Looking beyond simple electricity monitoring, its technology tracks gas and water use as well so that vendors can better manage supply and demand while promoting conservation among consumers and use of devices like programmable thermostats.

Based in North Carolina, the company has 20 years of experience in radio frequency technology, … Continue Reading

gWallet starts fund to finance more social games with its platform

gWallet is announcing today that it is starting an early-stage fund to invest in social gaming companies. That’s separate from its main business of creating a platform for special offers to help monetize social games.

But the fund can help spur business for the company’s platform and thereby speed its adoption, said Gurbaksh Chahal, chief executive and founder of gWallet. Offers are special ads that users can participate in, in lieu of paying for virtual … Continue Reading

Rebtel acquires Talkster VoIP service to expand international mobile calling

Swedish based internet calling service Rebtel has announced today that it has acquired Free World Dialing, a mobile calling application, from Talkster for an undisclosed amount. The company notes that under the agreement, Rebtel will now carry all of Talkster’s international calls and Free World Dialing customers will now have access to unlimited free international mobile calls between 52 countries.

The joined services will now offer customers a quick and easy way to call internationally … Continue Reading

Ifbyphone buys Cloudvox, lets clients build their own open-source telephony apps

Ifbyphone, a company offering a suite of its own web-based voice and phone applications, announced today that it has acquired Cloudvox to give its customers the tools they need to build their own open-source, customized phone applications to fit their business needs. No financial deals were disclosed.

The deal gives Ifbyphone an open API it can use to scale its voice application offerings. Only months old, Cloudvox provides web developers (even less experienced ones) with … Continue Reading

BumpTop launches for Mac, turns your desktop into your desk (+100 free accounts)

Look at your computer desktop. Everything’s clean, rigid, in nice neat rows and columns. Now look at your desk (or at least mine): piles everywhere, mess galore, and yet, somehow, it works much better than the computer version.

BumpTop thinks it can bridge that gap, making your desktop behave more like your desk. An application that launched initially in April of 2009, BumpTop is launching a Mac version today. There’s been a Windows version since … Continue Reading

Sauce Labs raises $3.1M to test your website

Website testing company Sauce Labs just announced that it has raised $3.1 million in a first round of funding. The San Francisco startup is trying to build a business around Selenium, the open source testing tool developed by company co-founder Jason Huggins.

Selenium has been downloaded around 2.6 million times, and has been used for testing at companies including Google, Yahoo, eBay, and Salesforce.com, Sauce Labs says. (In fact, Huggins worked at Google for a … Continue Reading

SMS network GupShup closes $12M round

In December, Indian SMS-based social network GupShup announced that they had amassed more than 25 million users. A few weeks ago, they inked a deal with Facebook to let the social network’s users go mobile. GupShup CEO Beerud Sheth (in photo) claims to account for 5 percent of all SMS traffic in India.

Now, Webaroo, the parent company behind GupShup, has announced a fourth round of funding led by Globespan Capital Partners, with additional financing … Continue Reading

LED makers glow with $37M from the Dept. of Energy

The Department of Energy has handed out $37 million in stimulus money to companies making and working with light-emitting diodes and their organic cousins. These sources of lighting — referred to as ‘solid state lighting’ — have the potential to be ten times more energy efficient than traditional incandescent bulbs.

The award money, intended to be matched by more than $28 million in corporate investment, is aimed at achieving a specific goal: for solid state … Continue Reading

In five days, Zynga raises $1.5M for Haiti via Facebook games

Zynga‘s gamers have donated more than $1.5 million in the past five days for Haitian earthquake relief. They did so by making donations directly from within Zynga’s top four games on Facebook.

Zynga, the biggest maker of social games on Facebook, said that some 300,000 Zynga game players from 47 countries have purchased virtual goods inside the games, with all of the proceeds for the specific game item sales going to the U.N.’s World Food … Continue Reading