VentureBeat

The Active Network, a company that offers sports community sites like Active.com, has raised an $80 million fifth round of funding, led by existing investor and strategic partner ESPN, with additional funding from venture firms.

The San Diego-based company offers a range of events, marketing and online community services based around participatory sports. It was founded in 1998 and tried to IPO in 2004 before pulling back. It currently makes most of its $102 million in revenue through event transactions, according to what Techcrunch hears.

The company has already raised at least $275 million over its ten-year history. The new funding is for more acquisitions, which the company has already made eleven of since last year.

Canaan Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, and Performance Equity Partners also participated in this round.

Though still arguably in its juvenile stages, the online advertising market has already been through several major technological shifts, with the introduction of behavioral, contextual and demographic targeting for ads. What’s next has been a subject for debate. Several early pioneers have bet that it’s semantic technology, with a company called Peer39.

In stealth mode for the last two years, Peer39 has begun slowly unveiling its product. Like other companies based on semantics and natural language processing, Peer39 claims its software, SemanticMatch, can read content in a way that roughly parallels human understanding.

Where for an advertiser like Coca-Cola, Google would find keywords like “cola” to bring up its ads, and other schemes would look at the age or location of web users, semantics take a more holistic look at a web page, determining the overall subject and tone.

Where keyword advertising might insert an ad because “cola” is used several times on the page, even if the overall topic is unrelated or the writing it negative to cola, semantic technology claims to be able to tell if an ad is really appropriate to the content.

Because of that, Peer39 could be useful for content that changes often and unpredictably — some examples being blogs, forums, news, and especially social media, which I speculated was the company’s target last year. User-generated content has been a particular challenge for advertising networks, so if Peer39 can prove SemanticMatch is effective, it’ll have its work cut out for it. To help prove itself, the company also has a a set of analytical tools based on semantic mapping, which help correlate ad placement to conversion and click-through rates.

It’s likely we’ll see some fast development in this space over the next year or two. Some have been speculating that Microsoft intends to move into the space after we broke the story that it plans to acquire semantic search company Powerset yesterday. Google, also, has been toying with its algorithms, though it’s as tight-lipped as ever. And other companies, like Ad Pepper Media, also say they’re developing semantic ad targeting.

While there seems to be enough money sloshing around for the best contenders to all get a piece, there are enough changes in online advertising, as well as mobile, to keep everything uncertain. VentureBeat contributor Julie Ruvolo wrote a lengthy piece about the view from Madison Avenue earlier this year that’s worth a look.

Peer39’s firepower comes from a set of executives and board members with backgrounds in either semantics or advertising. CEO Amiad Solomon sold a company called IDX to GE, while COO Matthew Goldstein just moved over from advertising giant Tacoda. Another former Tacoda Exec, Daniel Jaye, is on the board, along with Eytan Elbaz, who helped invent Google AdSense and sold Applied Semantics to the search giant.

The New York-based company has taken almost $12 million to date, between an $8.2 million funding we reported in October and a round of over $3 million earlier in the year. Its backers include Canaan Partners, Dawntreader Ventures and former Shopping.com CEO Daniel Ciporin.

A few months ago, VentureBeat editor Matt Marshall highlighted the various players in the gesture recognition technology space, speculating that “one day, very soon, you’ll be able to control an avatar or character on a screen with a mere gesture of your hands or body.”

That day is here, says Prime Sense CEO Inon Beracha. The Tel Aviv, Israel-based company believes it will be the “Intel inside” for the 3D peripheral world, and with a new $20.4 million second round of funding, it may have the cash to make its vision happen.

Prime Sense’s product is a device which allows a computer to perceive the world in 3D and derive an understanding of the world based on sight, just the way humans do, Beracha says. The device includes a pair of sensors — which “see” a user — and a digital “brain” that understands movement.

The device is plug-and-play, but won’t be sold on its own. Rather, it will be packaged with other companies’ products.

“[The product is] like you’re wearing a suit with tens of thousands of Wiis on your body,” said Beracha, who in 2000 helped take Ceragon Networks, a provider of high-capacity Ethernet wireless solutions that he co-founded, public on Nasdaq,

Prime Sense — whose product was demoed at the Consumer Electronics Show in February — has signed many “big names” not only in the gaming industry, but across the board in consumer electronics as well.

Compared with competing technologies, Prime Sense is superior in terms of both price and functionality, according to Beracha. “We are doing 3D capturing,” he says. “The competition focuses on ‘time of light’ technology — flashing a very strong IR light and measuring their reflection— and it requires quite expensive components including a high speed shutter, which is very expensive.”

Those competitors, profiled here, include Softkinetic, XTR, Oblong Industries, 3DV systems, and GestureTek.

Although Beracha sees the Nintendo Wii as a competitor, he claims Prime Sense’s technology is better and cheaper, saying that the electronics carrying their product will cost less than Nintendo’s Wii.

“Since the mouse was introduced, the complexity of consumer devices has evolved dramatically. In comparison, user interfaces have remained under-developed. Prime Sense’s technology propels user interfaces straight into the future,” Maizels said.

Prime Sense has kept most of its work secret, although a meeting with Beracha several months ago left VentureBeat’s Chris Morrison impressed with the technology. But although the company presented at CES, it has remained relatively quiet. Beracha said that the biggest announcements will come from its partners.

Although Primse Sense seems positioned to do well in its own space, there are other technologies on the horizon. Several companies are lining up to create a cheap competitor to the Wii controller. There’s also mind-reading technology from the likes of Emotiv and Neurosky.

Prime Sense previously received $9 million in a previous round of funding from two of Israel’s leading VCs, Genesis Partners and Gemini Israel Funds. A new investor, Canaan Partners, led the current round.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Mirna Thera spins out of Asuragen with $3M (release)
• Stroke-therapy startup CoAxia raises $12M (release)
• Stealthy device maker Synvascular gets $6.5M (peHUB)
• AndroScience seeks $3.5M for anti-testosterone drugs (VentureWire)
• Austria’s ProtAffin takes in €1.1M grant (release)
• Singapore’s Moleac receives $3.5M for Chinese medicine (release)
• Alethia Bio gets C$2.4M for antibody drugs (release)
• Alba Thera names Bruce Peacock as CEO (release)
• SkinMedica names Mary Fisher as CEO (release)
  

Mirna Thera spins out of Asuragen with $3M – Mirna Therapeutics, a newly minted Austin, Tex., startup focused on “microRNA” (miRNA) drugs, spun out from its parent Asuragen with $3 million in seed capital. The new company is taking Asuragen’s miRNA intellectual property with it.

MicroRNAs, like small interfering RNAs (siRNAs, for those into the acronym soup here), are short stretches of nucleic acid that can silence the activity of particular genes. These miRNAs, however, are encoded in the human genome and appear to affect multiple genes at once by interfering with “master” regulatory genes. Several miRNAs have been linked to cancer, suggesting that measuring levels of miRNAs might yield early detection of tumors.

Asuragen will continue to explore miRNAs as possible diagnostic tools, while Mirna will look into developing particular miRNA molecules as cancer drugs. Mirna initially plans to target lung cancer, prostate cancer and acute myeloid leukemia. None of its drug candidates are ready for testing in humans yet.

Stroke-therapy startup CoAxia raises $12M –  Maple Grove, Minn.-based CoAxia, a device startup focused on treatment for clot-related strokes, raised $11.5 million as an extension of its third funding round. Its backers included existing investors Canaan Partners, Prism Venture Partners, Baird Venture Partners, Affinity Capital Management, Johnson and Johnson Development and SVB Capital Partners.

CoAxia is developing a catheter designed to increase the flow of oxygenated blood in the brains of stroke patients by restricting its flow to the lower extremities, thereby shunting additional blood into brain vessels that haven’t been blocked by a clot. The minimally invasive device is threaded into a central artery near the kidneys, where a doctor can inflate two balloons designed to block roughly 70 percent of the blood flow to the lower body. The device is currently in a late-stage clinical trial.

updated
Silicon Valley venture firm Canaan Partners has raised its latest venture capital fund, at $650 million — relatively robust when compared to most venture capital firms these days.

The firm said it is focusing on seed and early stage deals, and seeks to target digital media, in an effort to draw in the younger entrepreneur.

Last year, by comparison, big-name firm Kleiner Perkins raised a more modest $600 million fund.

One reason for the relatively large size is that the firm is investing abroad. Many other venture capital firms create separate funds for regional investing. But Canaan is investing from a single pool of money. The firm said it will commit a quarter of its funds to international investments.

It has targeted India and Israel (see our coverage of Canaan’s first moves here), backing companies such as Consim, formerly known as BharatMatrimony, which it says is the world’s largest consumer site for matrimonial services, based in India; and LiveU, an Israeli provider of mobile video broadcasting technology.

[Update: Consim, in fact, has just raised $11.75 in a second round of funding led by Mayfield Fund, joined by Yahoo and Canaan Partners (it had raised $8.65 from Yahoo and Canaan in 2006). Consim has 15 million registered users, and also runs other sites that include Clickjobs.com, IndiaProperty.com and IndiaAutomobile.com, according to a piece about the funding in VentureWire this morning.]

The fund will focus on both technology and healthcare companies. The firm also promoted Dr. Stephen Bloch to general partner.

Here’s the latest action:

1) Super Tuesday looks good for McCain, Obama in California
Update: But California went to Clinton / McCain
2) AOL acquires affiliate network buy.at
3) Blue Frog Media files for bankruptcy
4) Google Apps adds security from Postini
5) Solar panels that work even when the sun’s down
6) Baidu sued for linking to pirated music
7) Middle East cable break speculations
8) Flickr users still hate Microsoft

Super Tuesday looks good for McCain, Obama in California — According to the third and last Reuters / Zogby poll, Romney leads the Republicans with 40 percent support in California, while Obama leads the Democrats with 49 percent. However, a more recent WSJ article suggests that while Obama has seen a surge in popularity, Romney’s chances of winning the state have dropped to only 37 percent. Sarah Lacy comments on a poll purportedly showing Hillary in the lead in the Valley: “Based on my personal polling, that’s horsesh**.” We’d tend to agree, but any Hillary supporters out there can feel free to let us know if we’re wrong. For a quick recap of the various candidate’s stances on tech issues (because that’s all we care about here, right?), go to this CNET article and scroll down to the table. Finally, if you can’t get enough of the election happenings, check out the Google/Twitter Super Tuesday Map, mentioned in a VentureBeat article earlier today.

Update note on the above: At midnight, it looks almost certain that Hillary Clinton has won California, along with three other big states. Perhaps it was those quiet Silicon Valley supporters chipping in. McCain performed as expected here, taking the state. The overall race for both parties is still an open field, with McCain front-running for the Republicans and Clinton looking just slightly ahead for the Democratic nomination.

AOL acquires affiliate network buy.at — AOL has picked up an affiliate marketing network called buy.at for an undisclosed price (although TechCrunch UK reports that it was probably around $150 million). Buy.at offers pay-per-action advertising, rather than paying based on other standard measurements like page impressions or click-throughs. The company was founded in 2002 and funded by DFJ Esprit. See the press release for more.

Blue Frog Media files for bankruptcy — Blue Frog Media, an “interactive TV music channel” funded to the tune of $16 million by Canaan Partners and MK Capital, has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, according to John Cook at the Seattle PI. The company has a slew of creditors and liabilities up to a million dollars, but the back story is even more complicated, with investors fighting for control and some uncertainty over whether the bankruptcy filing is official. None of that is likely to change the end scenario for Blue Frog, though, with one of the company’s creditor’s telling Cook “We have pretty much written it off.”

Google Apps adds security products from Postini – For $3, $12 and $25 respectively, Google has begun offering message filtering, security and discovery powered by a company it acquired, Postini, to its Apps package (Gmail, Google Talk, Calendar and Docs). The additions show that Google is serious about trying to make its online products more palatable for enterprise use.

Solar panels that generate electricity even when the sun’s down — Researchers at the Idaho National Laboratory have developed a prototype solar panel that could absorb infrared radiation, which is present even at night. Their innovation is using highly efficient “nanoantennaes” embedded in an inexpensive material. More at the INL website.

Baidu sued for linking to pirated music — Baidu may have captured the majority share of the Chinese search market, but part of its appeal may be a certain lax attention to copyrights, according to a lawsuit filed by the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry. The suit points to Baidu’s practice of linking directly to pirated material, a practice the IFPI already won a judgement against Yahoo China for. More at Ars Technica.

Middle East cable breaks a frightening possibility for the future? — The four undersea fiber-optic cables cut near the Middle East have presented a mysterious case: Most serious media outlets have declined to speculate on the how or why of the breaks, but it seems unlikely that four breaks in as many days could be accidental. Thus, we’re forced to turn to Global Guerillas for some nuggets of Ludlum-esque theorizing. Our two favorites: “Disconnection from the global communications grid is very likely to become a form of economic/social coercion in the future,” and, from the comments, “Somebody wanted to (gently) make sure the Iranian oil bourse didn’t open for business until after Super Tuesday.”

Flickr users still hate Microsoft — Appalled at the idea of Microsoft inheriting their precious service from Yahoo, some 1,855 members (at last count) have joined an anti-Microsoft group on Flickr. If unending election coverage isn’t wasting enough of your time today, the resulting Flickr gallery should help. Via TechCrunch.

Motionbox, a video-sharing site focused on trusted family use, said it has raised $7 million in a second round of financing.

Motionbox is one of several companies that is turning away from the YouTube model and the public expression that comes with it. It lets you shoot video, upload it to its Web site and then edit it — and the share it privately with family and personal friends. OneTrueMedia is a similar company, by Kleiner Perkins (see our coverage).

The Motionbox round was led by new investor Constellation Ventures, a unit of Bear Stearns Asset Management, and previous investors Canaan Partners and SAS joined in. The company said the round was raised at a higher value than its initial round.

Motionbox launched a free service last year, which lets you upload 100 megabytes per video, and store 300 megabytes. On November 13, Motionbox launched “Motionbox Premium,” the subscription service of $29.99 that includes unlimited storage and “TV-quality” downloads for watching on various devices. It also launched Motionbooks, video flipbooks you can make with your personal videos.The service will eventually cost $34.99 a year