VentureBeat

NEA is the elephant in the room with new $2.5B fund

New Enterprise Associates, the major Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture firm, announced today that its new fund, its 13th, has finally closed at $2.5 billion — making it the largest fund raised by any venture firm in two years and encompassing 17 percent of all of the venture capital funds raised last year. This is a big feat.

Investing in energy, enterprise software, consumer-facing healthcare-related startups, NEA, the world’s largest venture firm ($11 billion across all its...

5 o’clock roundup: Attack downs e-commerce sites, Google hits FTC speed bumps and more

Here’s the latest action:

Blackberry Messenger to blame for service outage — Blackberry experienced delays and interruptions when trying to send or receive messages during a service-wide outage yesterday. Today, the phone’s parent company,Research in Motion, attributed the trouble to two recently-launched versions of Blackberry Messenger that turned out to be buggy. In response, the company is providing an even newer version, recommending that all users download it as soon as possible.

FTC puts Google’s...

Jobvite takes $8.2M to expand recruiting on social networks

Jobvite, provider of software that helps companies recruit hires via popular social networks, has raised $8.25 million in a second round of funding to continue product development. Based in San Francisco, the company helps its clients create job posts on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, shuttle applicants through interviews and offers, and even leverage their current employees’ social graphs to find the best candidates.

Operating on the theory that employee referrals usually make...

Fluidigm raises $10.7M to enhance stem-cell studies

Fluidigm, maker of chips used in genetic analysis systems, has raised $10.7 million of a targeted $14 million round of debt, warrants, rights and securities, according to a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The South San Francisco company recently announced that it will be launching a new chip to speed and enhance the study and genotyping of stem cells.

Significantly, Fluidigm’s co-founder is Stephen Quake, the Stanford professor of bioengineering who recently...

Complete Genomics seals $45M for cheaper gene sequencing

Complete Genomics, provider of supposedly cheaper and faster DNA sequencing services, has raised $45 million in a fourth round of funding — a huge amount for a biotech company in today’s economic environment. Based in Mountain View, Calif., the company says it will be able to sequence people’s genes in only a few days, and for the bargain price of $5,000.

Apparently, genetic companies are where it’s at in the life science market right now....

Pacific Biosciences takes $68M as genome sequencing becomes more competitive

Pacific Biosciences, one of the companies working to advance DNA sequencing technology, just brought in $68 million in new financing — bringing its total raised over the last year to a staggering $188 million. The Menlo Park, Calif., firm says it plans to use the money to prepare its new real-time sequencing system for commercial launch in 2010.

Its ability to raise such a substantial amount of money is significant for several reasons. Not only...

DNA-decoding startup 23andMe raises another $2.6M from Google

Google has invested another $2.6 million in 23andMe, the genetics startup co-founded by Anne Wojcicki (who’s married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin). The funding was revealed in a regulatory filing first spotted by Silicon Alley Insider.

Mountain View, Calif.-based 23andMe charges a $399 fee to provide customers with information about their genes, such as their predisposition to different diseases and their ancestry. Customers spit into a tube, send it to the company’s lab, then four to...

MIT busts genome reader Navigenics on patents

Navigenics, a Foster City, Calif. company that checks consumers’ genomes for indications of disease, is being sued by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for allegedly infringing on a patent that the university licensed exclusively to E8 Pharmaceuticals.

If MIT wins the suit, Navigenics will have to pay damages to both the school and E8. It will also have to pay to officially acquire the patent or pay royalties. This patent has been a sticking point...

23andMe gets $11M boost to decode your DNA

23andMe, the company that deciphers consumers’ genomes for them, has raised $11 million of an anticipated $24.26 million second round of capital. The company was cofounded by Anne Wojcicki, wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

The firm didn’t disclose its recent investors, but peHub noted this morning that venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures has just divested from the company. While MDV first acquired shares in 23andMe, it sold them back to the company 18...

NEA breaks $2B for its latest venture capital fund

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.

Based in Menlo Park, Calif., NEA raised its last fund, which...

Roundup: Brin backs Parkinson’s study, iPhone gets shakable ads, and more

Google co-founder backs major Parkinson’s study –  Sergey Brin says he plans to contribute money and DNA to a study run by his wife Anne Wojcicki’s startup 23andMe.

Dockers introduces shakable iPhone ad — Users can shake their iPhones to make urban street dancer Dufon perform his moves. The ad was created by mobile ad company Medialets.

Twofish launches analytics platform for social games — The company’s Elements platform will help social game and virtual...

Winners of the 2008 Crunchies

Here are the winners of this year’s Crunchies, which honor the best tech companies from 2008. More than 170,000 people voted to select the nominees, and more than 350,000 people voted to select the winners. The awards were sponsored by TechCrunch, GigaOm, Silicon Alley Insider, and this very blog.

TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld emceed the event in San Francisco’s Herbst Theater (publisher Michael Arrington was feeling under the weather), and he was joined on-stage by some...

Yahoo, LinkedIn execs join personal genomics startup 23andMe

23andMe, the startup that helps consumers decode their genetic information, has announced two big hires: former LinkedIn Vice President of Revenue and Customer Operations, Sarah Imbach, is the Mountain View, Calif. startup’s new chief operating officer; former Yahoo User Experience Vice President, Larry Tesler, has been named a “Product Fellow.”

23andMe says Imbach was at LinkedIn for four and a half years and before that worked as an independent consultant and at PayPal. Tesler’s background...

Fast gene sequencing in two years? Investors bet $100M on Pacific BioSciences making it happen

Representing a potential medical quantum leap similar to, but even more important than the commercialization of X-ray imaging, Pacific BioSciences has taken a whopping $100 million to make it possible to affordably map out an individual’s entire genome in a matter of minutes, and for under $1,000 dollars.

While several startups, including 23andMe and deCODEme, are already offering cheap genetic testing for individuals, the technology Pacific Bio is looking at...

Roundup: Six Apart launches ad network, Microsoft acquires Xobni…maybe and more

Here’s the latest action:

Six Apart evolves into an ad network — The blogging company behind MovableType, TypePad and Vox is offering a new advertising program which will give publishers more control over ads and revenue from their sites. The company claims its ad network will be better than the many others out there (with more popping up everyday) because it has the best experience with advertisements specific to blogs. The company also launched Six...

23andMe allows a peek at its genomics service, minus the $999 fee

23andMe — the Google-backed startup that scans your genome for disease-risk factors and other information, now lets anyone see how the service works without first charging $999 for the privilege. My first impression: It packs a tremendous amount of information into clean, uncluttered pages that are still relatively easy to understand even for newcomers to genetics.

The 23andMe service stands in particularly sharp contrast to a similar offering from deCODEme, which I reviewed unfavorably here...

23andMe makes genomics personal — and slick

(UPDATED: See below.)

As I discussed a few weeks ago with respect to deCODEme — a “personal genomics” service hurriedly launched last November by Iceland’s deCODE Genetics in an apparent attempt to beat 23andMe to market (it succeeded by a day or so) — these sorts of services can awfully dense and difficult to navigate. The deCODEme service appears to be particularly bad in that respect, both in terms of its design and even the...

23andMe’s European vacation and other personal-genomics notes

(UPDATED: Added links from Davos. Also, an earlier version of this post originally appeared at the end of this item.)

While I’ve been diving into deCODEme’s surprisingly spotty personal-genomics service, 23andMe has been whooping it up in Europe. The startup launched its consumer gene-scanning service there and made a splash at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where it handed out 1,000 free saliva-collection kits to attendees and another 50 for “elite journalists.” (Google’s Sergei...

deCODEme and its questionable disease-risk predictions

(UPDATED: Original final paragraphs on 23andMe broken out as a separate post here.)

A few days ago, I noted that deCODEme, the personal-genomics spinoff of Iceland’s deCODE Genetics, looks to be offering disease-risk predictions based on surprisingly thin evidence. I looked into it a little more deeply, and while I’m not a geneticist or even a close approximation thereof, I’m still a little taken aback by how little deCODEme currently seems to be flying on...

Bioroundup: Stem-cell science and money, genetic tests go political, clinical-trial data woes, and more

(NOTE: Apologies — especially to RSS readers — if you’ve seen this post before, but an apparent server error ate it late yesterday and I was only able to recover it this morning. Enjoy, or ignore, as seems most fit.)

Featured stories: Stem-cell science, money and death Gene tests: Out of control? Clinical-trial data wants to be free Drug, biotech industries face uncertainty Short takes

Clones, regrown hearts, money and death — Last week, the...