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Fulcrum Microsystems has created an alliance for its partners to adopt its chips more quickly and has raised $29.2 million in venture capital.

The Calabasas, Calif., chip company has now raised nearly $100 million in five rounds since its founding in 2000. That’s a big chunk of change and it has been able to do so because its esoteric chip architecture has paid off, said Mike Zeile, vice president of marketing, in an interview. The result are faster, low-power chips that are useful in networking and storage equipment in data centers.

The company uses a form of computing dubbed “asynchronous,” a technology invented by its founders — Uri Cummings and Andrew Lines — while they were at Caltech. That means the chips are unlike others in that they have no crystal clock that keeps the timing consistent throughout the chip. Rather, the components on the chips can operate on their own at faster speeds and are synchronized or coordinated only as needed.

At first, it was a struggle to prove that the asynchronous technology could work. Fulcrum had to adapt its designs so they could work in the most modern chip factories. When it launched its first Pivot Point chip in 2004, customers didn’t quite know what to do with it.

“We had a hammer and we used it for everything,” Zeile said.

Then it adopted a hybrid approach that combined both asynchronous and synchronous components on the same chip, Zeile said. The chips have found homes in high-speed communications equipment in enterprise data centers as well as devices at the network’s edge.

Today, at the Interop show in Las Vegas, Fulcrum announced its ControlPoint Developer Alliance with nine companies to enable communications equipment providers to create switching technologies with Fulcrum’s chips more easily. The companies include Continuous Computing, Green Hills Software, Liquid Computing, Nimbus Data Systems, Open Grid Computing, Panasas, Quadrics, SMC Networks and XORP. Zeile said this will create an ecosystem that will improve chip adoption.

“We give them off-the-shelf software so they can get up and running,” Zeile said.

The investors include Granite Ventures, Infinity Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Palomar Ventures, and Worldview Technology Partners. Also included is an unnamed strategic investor.

The company has 65 employees. It has more than 80 designs under way at 50 or 60 customers. Its primary competitor is Broadcom, which makes synchronous-only chips.

Stealthy Mountain View, Calif.-based ExploraMed NC4 has raised $18.5 million of an expected $20 million first funding round, I’m told. The medical-device startup doesn’t have a Web site, and doesn’t even seem to have its own address yet.

Instead, ExploraMed NC4 — the name is a placeholder intended to obscure the startup’s strategy — is still housed at ExploraMed, a medical-device incubator backed by New Enterprise Associates, among others. ExploraMed was founded in 1995 by Joshua Makower, an NEA venture partner and a Stanford consulting professor who also co-directs the university’s Biomedical Technology Innovation Program.

Makower confirmed the fundraising, but declined to say what NC4 will be doing. “I love to talk about my companies, but I’ve found there’s virtue in keeping things secret as long as possible from competitors who are just dying to know what we’re up to,” he said. “I’ve learned from experience that if they can get a whiff of what we’re doing, they’ll just copy it.” Makower is not the startup’s CEO, and says ExploraMed will announce NC4’s leader “at the right time.”

Investors in the NC4 round include NEA, Morgenthaler Partners and the Makower Family Trust. Makower said the company is still corralling individual investors who’ve expressed interest in contributing the remaining $1.5 million for the round.

ExploraMed has so far launched five device makers, several of which we’ve covered here at VentureBeat LifeScience. Its most recent companies include Vibrynt, a stealthy device maker that raised $16 million in Aug. 2007, and NeoTract, a Pleasanton, Calif., developer of devices for non-cancerous prostate growths, which raised a total of $21.4 million in its first round.

In video games, Electronic Arts owns the gigantic EA Sports franchise. But Jeff Anderson says he didn’t get the memo that it’s a bad idea to start a sports video game company. In spite of the competition, he managed to convince New Enterprise Associates to give his new company, Play Hard Sports, $5 million in venture capital.

The company will make online sports games such as football for “casual fans,” or those who don’t spend an inordinate amount of time playing sports games on consoles. The strategy is to build a strong social community around the games with tournaments, fantasy sports leagues and ladder challenges.

He has taken a different approach and it sounds like he might find a way to live under the shadow of the giant. Until last fall, Anderson was the CEO of Turbine Entertainment, an online game company that has made massively multiplayer online fantasy games such as “Asheron’s Call” and “Lord of the Rings Online” for almost two decades. While the company was successful, Anderson felt he wanted to try new genres.

The company is based in Foxborough, Mass., near the stadium where the New England Patriots play. A huge sports fan, Anderson said it is the “best sports town in the world” and was thus the ideal place to start his company.

He said that he was well aware that EA has a “massive recurring revenue stream” from its sports games, which fans buy every season. He also saw that there is huge growth in the armchair quarterbacks playing fantasy sports leagues, with the demographics spreading beyond console gamers. There has also been a big growth in casual fare online. These games will be shorter than average football video games, with gamers playing one or two games during a lunch hour.

And in contrast to console games, Anderson wants to take a page from the playbook of MMO games: create customer loyalty by allowing them to invest in each character, such as a quarterback, in the game. In his games, you will be able to create teams with players who can get better over time the more that they play.

“I want a character that persists and that I can invest in over time,” Anderson said.

Anderson has a small team now. He says his games will feature good graphics, but not on the same par with EA’s console games. The first games are expected to debut this fall. The games will be part of a site that offers sports news and places for players to interact with other players.

The football games will feature ads, with video ads playing much the way they do in the real games: during time-outs, quarter breaks, and at half time. EA is likely to respond in some way. It already has various features built into games such as adding sports news feeds and the ability to talk with others online. But so far, it looks like Anderson has the monopoly on this particular approach.

Audience, a maker of voice processing technology that mimics the sort of audio processing that happens in the human brain, has announced its $15 million third round of financing.

We actually covered Audience’s unveiling in February, and first broke news on the funding, but the announcement fills out list of investors,and now includes Tallwood Venture Capital and VentureTech Alliance. We already mentioned Paul Allen’sVulcan Capital and New Enterprise Associates.

The Mountain View, Calif., company makes the A1010, a voice processor that can filter out noise and sharpen voice reception in cellular phone headsets. The company will use the money to accelerate its business growth.

The investment brings total funding amount to date to $45 million.

The A1010 groups and processes complex mixtures of sound and thus handles sound the way people actually perceive it and filter out noise. Trends in cellular usage will favor this company. Laws such as California’s upcoming law require cell phone users to use hands-free headsets while driving, but the quality of voice head sets is poor.

Nurien Software, a Korean social networking and online gaming company, has raised $15 million in a first round of venture capital from investors in the U.S. and China.

The company lets users create their own avatars and then socialize in a variety of topic areas. Its service has been in development for three years. Investors include Beijing-based Northern Light Venture Capital, Globespan Capital Partners, New Enterprise Associates, and QiMing Venture Partners.

The company is a closed beta in Korea this month. It is launching its service in China and Korea at the end of 2008 and in the U.S. in early 2009. Users can play online games such as MStar, an online dance game; Runway, a fashion show application; and QuizStar, a casual online game. I suppose if I saw those pictures above, I’d throw $15 million into this too.

Here’s the latest action:

Mobile enthusiast gives up on “mobile web” – Russell Beattie, a Silicon Valley developer and mobile enthusiast who spent two years working at Yahoo Mobile before launching a start-up called Mowser, has given up on the mobile sector. He writes: “The general answer is that I don’t actually believe in the ‘Mobile Web’ anymore, and therefore am less inclined to spend time and effort in a market I think is limited at best, and dying at worst. I’m talking specifically about sites that are geared 100% towards mobile phones and have little to no PC web presence. Two years ago I was convinced that the mobile web would continue to evolve in the West to mimic what was happening in countries like Japan and Korea, but it hasn’t happened, and now I’m sure it isn’t going to.” Mowser focused on adapting content for mobile phones. Beattie said the expected traffic never came. His story is a cold shower for industry players hoping advances by the iPhone and the Android will inject life into the sector.

Credit crunch hits cleantech after all — Despite some crowing from the clean-technology crowd that the credit crunch hadn’t hit it, it did eat into one a that sector clean-technology companies: private equity investment. Earth2Tech has a good wrapup of the numbers and commentary.

Silicon Valley’s giants are fine, but maybe not for long — The big tech companies of Silicon Valley, on the other hand, are humming along as if the current (probable) recession weren’t even taking place, says the San Jose Mercury News in its annual SV150 issue. The reason: Their international business divisions are going strong. However, the New York Times reports that housing markets worldwide are following the US market’s tailspin, so credit and spending abroad could suffer as well, challenging even multinational companies.

Feed your tank, starve a poor person — Biofuels have pushed back the fight against poverty by seven years and may continue to hurt poor people, according to a quote from World Bank president Robert Zoellick in the Guardian. The tapping of biofuels for alternative energy has faced a growing negative reaction, because it is sending food prices soaring around the world. Biofuels are made from food crops like corn and sugar, and so are taking away from the food stock. The effect, at least for the moment, will probably be limited to more cautious government subsidization policies.

Farecast rumored sold for over $75M — Online travel search site Farecast may have been sold for over $75 million, according to John Cook of the Seattle PI. He’s not sure who the buyer is, but speculates that Expedia would be a likely match since two major competitors, SideStep and Kayak, merged last year. Farecast has done well with its feature that lets you predict whether fares are going up or down in the near future, helping you decide when to buy.

Radio One buys Community Connect for $38M — Media giant Radio One has laid down $38 million for Community Connect, which operates niche sites based on ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. The company had taken funding from Dominion Ventures, ConnectCapital, Comcast Interactive Capital and Jump Ventures, according to peHUB.

YouTube dominates video, while Google roars in search — YouTube boasted 73.18 percent of all U.S. visits among a group of 68 online video websites in March, according to Hitwise. MySpaceTV received the second highest percentage of visits, with 9.21 percent followed by Google Video with 4.06 percent. YouTube dominates video more than Google dominates search. But then search makes much more money. Google got 67.3 percent market share for search, and that’s a high, while Yahoo and Microsoft hit new lows.

Gawker media cuts Wonkette and others loose — Gawker owner Nick Denton tells Silicon Alley Insider that as the economy stumbles, he’s ditching three “underperforming” Gawker sites: Wonkette, Gridskipper and Idolator, which will all continue under new ownership. That leaves the company to focus on its 12 “core titles,” like Silicon Valley’s beloved gossip blog Valleywag.

Google App Engine and Amazon web services, together at last — When Google launched its Engine App a week ago, allowing developers to build and deploy web applications on Google infrastructure, the move was widely seen as a move against Amazon’s web services. But just because they’re competing products doesn’t mean they can’t work together, as Portland entrepreneur Chris Anderson has shown by creating AppDrop, which allows you to build apps with Google’s software development kit and deploy in Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud. There have been complaints that Google Engine App locks in your applications, but AppDrop shows that isn’t quite true.

LiveUniverse reportedly acquires home page service Pageflakes — LiveUniverse, the online entertainment network run by former MySpace executive Brad Greenspan, has acquired the Ajax home page service Pageflakes, according to TechCrunch’s unidentified sources. Just a few hours earlier, GigaOM reported that Pageflakes was “desperately” seeking a buyer. Last February, a number of sites said that LiveUniverse purchased video site Revver, so the network appears to be in an acquisitive mood.

Real Time Worlds confirmed today that it has raised $50 million in venture capital to fund its online gaming ventures. The Dundee, Scotland video game studio will use the second round of funding to develop games such as All Points Bulletin, a massively multiplayer online game.

The round was led by Maverick Capital and existing investors New Enterprise Associates and WPP also participated. Real Time Worlds is run by founder David Jones, the creator of the original Grand Theft Auto game that has become one of the biggest video game franchises of all time.

The company has more than 200 game developers on staff and it produced the hit Xbox 360 console game “Crackdown,” its debut title, in 2007. The game sold more than 1.4 million units, which means it generated roughly $84 million at retail.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• HealthExtras buys venture-backed PBM HospiScript for $100M (release)
• Urological device-maker NeoTract adds $7.4M (VentureWire)
• RNAi-drug startup Intradigm seeks $35M (VentureWire)
• Israel’s Arbel Medical raises $3.5M for tumor cryotherapy (release)

HealthExtras buys venture-backed PBM HospiScript for $100M — HospiScript Services, a Montgomery, Ala., prescription-benefits manager, agreed to be acquired by HealthExtras of Rockville, Md. HealthExtras will pay $100 million in cash for the venture-backed firm, which services the hospice industry.

HospiScript had raised at least $4 million in funding, according to VentureWire. That amount represents a 2005 round that involved Advantage Capital Alabama and Waveland NCP Alabama Ventures. The company declined to say more about its funding history.

Both companies manage the use of prescription drugs — HealthExtras for corporate, government and nonprofit health plans, HospiScript for hospices — in ways that are intended to reduce costs. HealthExtras said the acquisition will help it expand in the fast-growing hospice space.

Urological device-maker NeoTract adds $7.4M – Pleasanton, Calif.,-based NeoTract (no Web site), a devicemaker focused on urological problems, added $7.4 million to its first round of financing, VentureWire reports. The new funding brings that round to a total of $21.4 million.

New Enterprise Associates provided the cash.

NeoTract is working on a device to treat benign prostate hyperplasia, which is a non-cancerous growth of the prostate. The company doesn’t describe its device, although it says the product should enter clinical trials next year.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Quark Pharma gets $27M for RNAi drugs (release)
• TargetRx takes in $9.6M for physician-prescribing data (release)
• D-Pharm raises more than $3M for fat-like drugs (release)
  
• Vortex Medical raises $2.3M for medical devices (VentureWire)
• Specialty pharma Ascio takes in $3M (VentureWire)
• Keraderm gets $1.7M for antifungal drugs (VentureWire)
• Contract researcher CTMG raises $500K toward $1M round (VentureWire)
• Singapore’s Progeniq raises seed funding for life-science computing (release)
• Acrongenomics scuttles Molecular Vision acquisition (peHUB)
• Michael Gutch joins H.I.G. Ventures (release)

Quark Pharma gets $27M for RNAi drugs – Fremont, Calif.-based Quark Pharmaceuticals, a biotech startup working on “RNA interference” drugs, raised $27 million in an eighth funding round. The company’s fundraising follows a failed attempt to go public last year, and reflects a somewhat smaller haul than the $30 million it had hoped to raise.

The company’s backers include investment vehicles of SBI Asset Management and SBI Investment, both subsidiaries of Tokyo-based SBI Holding. The investment cements Quark’s deep relationship with Japan; its previous investors include two other Tokyo-based investment partnerships, the Trans-Science Global Bio-Technology Fund and Asuka DBJ Investment LPS, and the company has long worked with several Japanese pharmaceutical companies as well.

Quark’s work in RNAi — the use of short RNA molecules to “silence” disease-related genes — has already produced two drug candidates that are in clinical trials. One is being tested in the eye condition known as age-related macular degeneration by Pfizer; Quark is testing the other as a way to prevent acute kidney industry.

Danny Zurr, Quark’s CEO, said the startup will use the funding to greatly expand  its clinical-trial program. By the second half of this year, the company plans to have its drug candidates in five different tests at Quark and Pfizer. We’ve written a fair bit about Quark and its colorful history over the past year or so.

TargetRx takes in $9.6M for physician-prescribing data – TargetRx, a Horsham, Pa., startup that analyzes physician-prescribing behavior for drug companies, raised $9.6 million in a new funding round. Its backers include Quaker BioVentures, New Enterprise Associates and Domain Associates.

Target bills itself as a company capable of providing “unparalled insights” into the way doctors prescribe drugs — always a subject of great interest to pharmas of all stripes. In practice, Target appears to get its information by paying doctors to participate in online marketing programs held in a closed forum on its Web site.

The company claims that its methods provide useful predictive information about physician behavior. In certain respects, its approach isn’t all that different from Sermo, which has begun selling access to its online doctor forum to investors and pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Boston Scientific spinout TriVascular2 takes in $65M (release)
• Inhaled-drug startup Transave raises $35M (release)
• Triage Wireless gets $20M for vital-signs monitors (release)
• Tryton Medical receives $14M for “bifurcation” stents (release)
  
• Synthetic bio startup Codon Devices adds $11M (release)
• Tracon Pharma takes in $4.5M against cancer and eye disease (VentureWire)
• Antibody maker f-star swaps in equity stake by TVM (PDF release)
• Drug packager MonoSol Rx withdraws IPO (IPOhome)
• GE Healthcare acquires portable-ventilator maker VersaMed (release)

Boston Scientific spinout TriVascular2 takes in $65M – In 2005, Boston Scientific acquired a Santa Rosa, Calif., medical-device startup called TriVascular. Today, it spun it out once again.

The newly private startup raised $65 million in a “first” funding round from the likes of MPM Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Delphi Ventures and Kearny Venture Partners. Thirty million dollars of that sum went straight to Boston Scientific, which also retains the right to take a minority stake in the company.

TriVascular’s original CEO, Michael Chobotov, will resume that position at the new company, joined by two other TriVascular founders. It’s not, however, entirely clear what TriVascular will be doing. The company was originally focused on repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms, which are unusual swellings of blood vessels that can rupture unexpectedly, often fatally. Boston Scientific, however, shut down its aneurysm-repair business in 2006, so it’s not immediately obvious that the reborn TriVascular will jump right back in.

Inhaled-drug startup Transave raises $35M – Transave, a Monmouth, N.J., biotech working on inhaled drugs for lung disease, raised $35 million in a fourth funding round. Investors included Quaker BioVentures, Bessemer Venture Partners, TVM Capital, Prospect Venture Partners, Fidelity Biosciences, Forbion Capital Partners and Easton Capital.

The startup is working on inhalable drugs for cystic fibrosis — in particular, a long-lasting form of the antibiotic amikacin, which is currently in mid-stage, phase II human testing. Transave had previously raised $58 million in venture capital, including a “recently completed” $40 million round.

Triage Wireless gets $20M for vital-signs monitors – Triage Wireless, a San Diego medical-device maker, raised $20.3 million in a second funding round. Investors included Qualcomm Ventures, Sanderling Ventures, 3i Group and Intel Capital.

Triage is developing wireless vital-signs monitors for long-term or continuous use. Its first product is a blood-pressure sensor that doesn’t require the old familiar inflated cuff.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Antibody-discovery startup Adimab raises new funding (release)
• Lung-device maker Spiration gets $19M (release)
• Sample-prep startup Protein Discovery pulls in $10M (release)
• Inogen takes in $13M for portable oxygen device (VentureWire)
• Healthcare IT concern Medaptus raises $11M for expansion (VentureWire)
• Contract lab Synexis raises $14M (peHUB)
• Medical-device VC firm BioStar Ventures takes in $24M of $80M fund (peHUB)
• Halsa Pharma gets $250K for “natural” obesity-control treatment (release)
• Diagnostics provider Lab21 acquires NPTech (peHUB)
• Galil Medical names Martin Emerson CEO (release)

Antibody-discovery startup Adimab raises new funding – Lebanon, N.H.-based Adimab, a biotech working on new ways to discover antibody drugs, has raised a second round of funding. The company didn’t disclose the size of the round.

Adimab, which raised $6 million last July, is one of several startups looking to design new antibody drugs in bioengineered yeast cells, as we wrote at the time. (Alder Biopharmaceuticals, which raised $40 million in January, is another.) The technique promises to be much faster — and freer of patent restrictions — than current methods. When Adimab completes its current manufacturing facility in the second quarter, it claims it will be able to produce a panel of human antibodies against a particular target in just 90 days, instead of the year or more traditional methods can require.

Investors included Polaris Venture Partners and SV Life Sciences, who also invested in the company’s first round.

Lung-device maker Spiration gets $19M – Spiration, a Redmond, Wash., medical-device startup, raised $18.5 million in a seventh funding round. Investors included Versant Ventures, Olympus Medical Systems, New Enterprise Associates, New Leaf Venture Partners, InterWest Partners, Investor Growth Capital and Three Arch Partners.

Spiration has now raised a total of $97 million. It is developing a set of one-way valves for emphysema that can be implanted in the lung’s airways via a minimally invasive procedure. These valves are designed to shunt air away from diseased portions of the lung and redirect it to healthier areas. The company said the funding would support commercialization of its device in Europe and to complete studies for regulatory approval in the U.S.

Other startups working on similar technology include Emphasys Medical, Pulmonx and Broncus Technologies.

Sample-prep startup Protein Discovery pulls in $10M – Knoxville, Tenn.-based Protein Discovery, a biotech with new laboratory technology for protein identification, raised $10 million in a third funding round. Investors included Santé Ventures, Memphis Biomed Ventures, the Southern Appalachian Fund, and the Nashville Capital Network.

The startup is developing technology that aims to “simplify” the process of preparing biological samples for protein analysis. The details are probably too much for anyone who’s not a lab technician themselves, but feel free to check out the company’s explanation if you dare.)

Inogen takes in $13M for portable oxygen device – Inogen, a Goleta, Calif., medical-device maker, raised $12.6 million in its fifth funding round, VentureWire reports. Investors included Accuitive Medical Ventures, Arboretum Ventures, Avalon Ventures, Novo A/S, Numenor Ventures and Versant Ventures.

The company makes and sells portable oxygen-delivery systems for patients suffering from a lung problem called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The product has been on the market for several years, and Inogen says it believes it might take several more before it’s in a position to be acquired or to go public.

TODAY’S HEADLINES:

• Precision Thera merger with “blank check” Oracle Healthcare collapses (release)
• Sleep Solutions takes in $21M for sleep-apnea diagnostics (release)
• Trevena takes in $24M for drugs targeting G-proteins (release)
• “Specialty biotech” PanGenetics gets €23M for antibody drugs (release)
• Cancer-drug maker Unibioscreen pulls in €5M (release)
• Danish contract manufacturer CMC Biologics raises new funding (PDF release)
• Healthcare investor EDF Ventures postpones fourth fund (VentureWire)
• Global TB-drug alliance names former Sanofi-Aventis exec Jerome Premmeurer as CEO (release)
• Liquidia Tech names Neal Fowler as CEO (release)

(NOTE: Sorry for the minimal posting yesterday — I was at the Health 2.0 conference with extremely limited Internet connectivity. Normal posting resumes today.)

Precision Thera merger with “blank check” Oracle Healthcare collapses – This item is now a standalone post here.

Sleep Solutions takes in $21M for sleep-apnea diagnostics – Sleep Solutions, a Pasadena, Md., developer of diagnostic devices for sleep apnea, raised $20.5 million in a new funding round. Investors included TPG Biotechnology, MedVenture Associates, Emergent Ventures and Lava Ventures.

Sleep Solutions has developed a home-use diagnostic device for identifying sleep apnea, which are breathing difficulties during sleep. Diagnosing apnea has traditionally required patients to spend the night in a sleep laboratory. Left untreated, apnea can increase the risk of more serious problems, including stroke and heart attack.

Trevena takes in $24M for drugs targeting G-proteins – Trevena (no Web site), a Berwyn, Penn., biotech focused on a new area of drug discovery, raised $24 million in a first funding round. Investors included Alta Partners, Healthcare Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and Polaris Venture Partners.

Like many biotechs, Trevena plans to develop drugs that attack a particular biological mechanism rather than any particular disease. In this case, the company is targeting a class of proteins known as G-protein coupled receptors, or GPCR, which according to the company are affected by close to 40 percent of all drugs on the market today. The company didn’t describe its plans in any detail.

Healthcare investor EDF Ventures postpones fourth fund – EDF Ventures, an Ann Arbor, Mich., VC firm specializing in early-stage healthcare, has delayed a planned fourth fund, VentureWire reports. The postponement is related to the departure last year of managing director Beau Lasky, who left for Steamboat Ventures.

The firm intends to begin talking to potential investors again in several months. EDF didn’t say how much it hopes to raise in the new fund; its third fund closed in 2005 with $55 million in commitments.

Wherever investor Carl Icahn treads, there’s usually turmoil.

Now, one of his companies, Motricity, a Durham, N.C. provider of mobile content applications for telecom carriers, is preparing to lay off up to 200 of its 650 employees, according to a North Carolina business publication WRAL.

We haven’t written about Motricity yet at VentureBeat, but the big-name investor Carl Icahn and other venture capitalists have pumped in more than $350 million into the company. The private Motricity is now considering going public.

Motricity acquired the mobile business unit of InfoSpace last fall for $135M, with Icahn, NEA and others providing the $185 million needed for the acquisition. The resulting employee overlap meant that the company would have to make layoffs, so they’ve been expected.

Some very smart people believe machines will take over — directing human affairs — sometime soon, perhaps within the next thirty years.

So much malarkey, you might think, until you consider the sorts of technologies being developed lately — some of which are starting to replicate human intelligence, one step at a time.

There’s Silicon Valley’s Numenta, the company started by Palm founder Jeff Hawkins, which is building a computer system that aims to think like the human brain. We’ve mentioned the company before, but Dean Takahashi, who starts writing for VentureBeat next week, provides an update about the fascinating company. Numenta’s software copies the human brain’s way of recognizing patterns with hierarchical memory (such as recognizing a dog shape; see image above and explanation here). Some 100 or so developers and eight companies are working to develop the software, and are applying it to several application areas, including visual object recognition and speaker voice identification.

It is the latter area, voice identification, that is seeing significant innovation — in part because of the booming mobile phone industry it serves. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week, another Silicon Valley company, Audience, emerged saying it has build a chip and software modeled that aims to function like the human ear in order to improve the sound quality of cellphones. It suppresses background noise by mimicking the human ear, which breaks down sounds into recognizable components of speech, and can thereby ignore other sources of sound. See the New York Times story about the Mountain View, Calif. company.

It was started by Lloyd Watts, a neuroscientist who studied with the physicist Carver Mead of Cal Tech. Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft, along with several venture capital firms including New Enterprise Associates, have pumped in more than $22 million into the company, we’ve learned.

Forest Baskett, an investor at NEA, told VentureBeat that Audience blows away competing technologies. Incumbents include Forte Media, which uses technology that forms a beam in order to track your voice, but which can experience interference if background noise finds its way into the beam. There’s also Softmax, which uses multiple microphones, and assumes it can sort out which voice source to focus on, but can also breaks down in busy environments like airports, where you can have five to ten sound sources at any given time. Qualcomm recently bought Softmax.

Yesterday, another voice identification company Solicall, of Israel, emerged saying its sophisticated technology serves Windows Mobile, and beats existing sound identification technologies. SoliCall’s software focuses on the specific voice of the speaker, using a personalized filter that first learns your voice and afterwards, during any call, passes through only your voice and screens all other voices, noises and sounds. It’s based an algorithm for which the company has filed a patent.

These bite-sized developments, where technology starts to mimicking the human, aren’t doing it the centralized Frankenstein way, but from the edges, one step at a time.