VentureBeat

Yodlee, an online finance web platform that directly serves banks and other financial institutions, has raised a large round of $35 million, led by banking giant Bank of America.

Although Yodlee has been something of a dark horse while popular personal finance sites like Mint have taken the spotlight, the company’s apparent success could indicate a more difficult road than anticipated for their competitors in the personal finance market, including Buxfer, Geezeo, Wesabe and many others.

The basic idea behind Yodlee is aggregation. The average American has 12 financial accounts of various types, according to CEO Anil Arora, and there are thousands of different services on offer, from banks to stock accounts. Yodlee got its start in 1999 as an aggregator of all the information from those different account types.

Today, it offers something called the Personal Financial Management Suite, which Arora called “a better, faster, easier Quicken online.” That product, in fact, is the back-end for Mint, which adds its own custom touches to help users understand where and how their money is distributed. However, it’s also used a growing majority of the country’s largest banks.

That should be worrying for independent finance sites. Most banks were very slow to add any online functionality beyond showing account balances and a list of transactions. That’s what provided an opening for personal finance sites to start up — consumers obviously want to see all the information from their various accounts in one place, arrayed in ways that are understandable. But banks are beginning to catch on, Arora says, and add the same tools to their own sites.

Given that the motivator for most people to seek out a personal finance site is a desire for things to be as easy as possible, if banks begin to aggressively use tools like Yodlee, there will be less incentive for their customers to seek out Mint and its cohorts, even if those sites continue to have an edge in visualization and functionality. In fact, Yodlee itself has only 50,000 users on its own personal finance portal, compared to 10 million who unwittingly use it through a bank.

Interestingly, Yodlee’s other big product, a recently-released bill payment solution, also sounds like a potential PayPal competitor down the road. Aside from the obvious function of paying bills from your utility, internet provider and other companies, it can transfer money between your various accounts.

Arora said you can also pay individuals, like your maid or gardener (if you’re lucky enough to have them). When I asked whether the service could be expanded, he only agreed that “other payments” could be addressed, but added, “Obviously, a lot of financial institutions are very interested in expanding transfers.” That seems to imply that other payments, for instance to a store or online auction, could be arranged in the future.

The funding, led by BoA, also brought on previous investors Warburg Pincus, Accel Partners and Institutional Venture Partners. Yodlee recapitalized with $40 million in 2002, making Warburg the primary shareholder; combined with the current funding, it has taken $75 million. It’s based in Redwood City, Calif.

Microsoft Corp has agreed to acquire Danger, a Silicon Valley company that makes the software for the Sidekick and other mobile devices, for an undisclosed amount.

Danger has worked away for ten years on its device software, and recently filed for an IPO, which we termed as risky (see our piece The Danger-ous IPO), because Danger has not been as open as trends would suggest it should be, and it’s difficult to see how it could really thrive on its own. It is still losing money. The IPO route has become even more risky, given the downturn in the market, and also because household budgets (upon which Danger relies) might continue to tighten.

The acquisition is somewhat surprising because because Danger has operated a platform independent of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. However, Microsoft said that Danger’s youthful audience and popular entertainment offerings make it attractive. Microsoft is also feeling pressure from the iPhone’s raging success and from Google’s emerging Android project.

Danger’s software offers HTML Web browsing, instant messaging, games, multimedia, social networking, Web e-mail and personal information management applications. Microsoft said wants to combine these services with Microsoft’s technologies, “including MSN, Xbox, Zune, Windows Live and Windows Mobile,” but it was vague about exactly how it plans to do so.

From Microsoft’s statement:

“The addition of Danger serves as a perfect complement to our existing software and services, and also strengthens our dedication to improving mobile experiences centered around individuals and what they like.”

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company provides services that allow people to keep in touch, stay organized and keep informed while on the go through real-time mobile messaging, social networking services and other applications ― all blended together on a single phone that is intuitive and customizable.

“Danger continues to provide an effortless and fun mobile experience for consumers,” said Henry R. Nothhaft, chairman and CEO of Danger Inc. “Now by combining our uncompromised application software and powerful back-end service with Microsoft, we can expand our innovative service offerings even further and take mobility to a new level.”

Danger was previously backed by $134 million, coming from players like Redpoint Ventures, Mobius VC and T-Mobile Venture Fund, Adams Street Partners, Deutsche Telekom, Diamondhead Ventures, inOvate Communications Group, Institutional Venture Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Orange Ventures, Softbank Capital Partners and VSP Capital.

Point Biomedical, a San Carlos, Calif., developer of new biomedical-imaging products, raised $25 million in a recapitalization, peHub reports. Such recapitalizations often amount to a kind of “reset button” for existing investors and lenders, and usually suggest that a startup has run into some kind of significant — but not insurmountable — obstacle.

Investors in the recap round include new investor Vedanta Opportunities Fund and existing investors William Blair Capital Partners, De Novo Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners, Saints Capital, Sprout Group and CHL Medical Partners. The recapitalization includes an additional $32.3 million that will become available to Point Bio once it attains an unspecified milestone, which it expects to occur in April.

There’s presumably a release about this, but Point Bio’s Web site has been down all morning, so for now I’m relying on peHub and VentureWire reports. I’ll update if the release turns up. According to VentureWire, Point Bio had previously raised over $110 million from a variety of venture-capital and private-equity firms.

Point Bio is developing a medical imaging and drug-delivery technology based on tiny, nested spheres it calls the BiSphere. This technology is currently in late-stage trials as an “imaging agent” that should make it possible to observe the flow of blood through the heart using ultrasound instead of more invasive methods. We previously covered the company when it raised money last July and described its technology in more detail there.

With a fresh $32 million funding going to nanotechnoloy firm NanoGram, mainly for development of next-generation solar cells, it’s a good time to point out some up-and-coming technologies that work on very small scales to make photovoltaic cells more efficient.

NanoGram has already had several commercial successes, including inventions in both electronics and medicine. However, the company has of late turned its sights on boosting the efficiency of solar cells.

The company is working on ultra-thin crystalline silicon which it says will reduce the cost of silicon-based solar cells to below $1 per watt hour, a price point that is generally considered a breakthrough.

Its latest funding is notable because Nanogram had so far only taken $27 million in funding since its inception in 1996, growing to over $20 million in annual revenue. It plans to use the additional $32 million (investor details at bottom) in part toward a pilot plant for solar modules.

SunFlake A/S, a European company, makes the same claim of being able to manufacture a low-cost cell with about 30 percent efficiency, roughly double the efficiency of the average solar cell available today.

Headed by noted scientist Martin Aagesen, the company plans to make use of a type of nanowire discovered by Aagesen that he calls “nanoflakes.” Blessed with a perfect crystalline structure, nanoflakes are capable of absorbing nearly all light directed at them, according to the company.

By growing its nanowires into a low-grade silicon substrate, SunFlake will reduce the need for large amounts of high-quality polysilicon when making cells. However, it has yet to announce plans to commercially manufacture cells.

Another methods on the horizon is the use of metal oxide nanoparticals in cells. Dr. Jin Zhang of the University of California, Santa Cruz, plans to use a combination of nanoparticles and quantum dots (using nano-crystals, as SunFlake does) to make a highly efficient solar cell.

(Nanotechnology, by the way, refers the field of science that works at the atomic and molecular scale, roughly between 1 to 100 nanometers. Elements and compounds take on different characteristics when they are so tiny, and studying them is leading to new users and inventions, as we’re seeing here.)

A team led by Zhang and including other researchers from China and Mexico recently tested a prototype cell using a nanocomposite material of their own devising. The cell performed even better than the researchers expected.

“We’re manipulating the energy levels of the nanocomposite material so the electrons can work more efficiently for electricity generation,” Zhang told ScienceDaily. His research is currently supported by various governmental groups from the three countries involved.

One note when considering these up-and-coming technologies: It will probably be about five years before they hit the market in force. However, as new technologies become more common, existing cost balances between different solar technologies, like polysilicon and CIGS cells, will likely be upset.

Finally, returning to NanoGram’s funding, the company brought on new investors Global Cleantech Capital, Masdar Clean Tech Fund, Mitsui Ventures, Nagase & Company, Nanostart AG, TEL Venture Capital, and Yasuda Enterprise Development for the round. Existing investors ATA Ventures, Bay Partners, Harris & Harris, Institutional Venture Partners, Nth Power, Rockport Capital Partners, SBV Venture Partners, and Technology Partners also participated.