Hyperion brings in $13M for gastrointestinal relief
Hyperion Therapeutics, maker of pharmaceuticals to treat hepatology and gastrointenstinal conditions, has raised $13 million of an anticipated $15 million round of debt, according to VentureWire. Contributors have not been disclosed, but the South San Francisco, Calif. company had previously raked in $40 million in a second round of funding from Sofinnova Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Washington Research Foundation Capital.
Hyperion is one of the companies that has reported fundraising activity due… Continue Reading
Deeya closes $30M for long-term electrical storage
Deeya Energy, provider of a unique battery for long-term electrical storage, has raised $30 million in a third round of funding to offer renewable and more efficient energy options. Based in Fremont, Calif., the company says it is poised to take advantage of a $46 billion energy storage market — especially now when cutting energy costs is a prime concern for businesses and consumers alike.
The recent round of financing was led by Technology Partners and… Continue Reading
With Flex, Engine Yard targets Rails applications in Amazon’s cloud
Engine Yard, a startup that manages web applications built using the Ruby on Rails programming framework, is planning to expand its services for applications running on Amazon’s infrastructure, adding to its existing Solo product (for smaller developers) with Engine Yard Flex, for larger, industrial-scale deployments.
The goal of companies like Engine Yard is to remove much of the difficulty from deploying and scaling web applications (so they work across lots of users) — once someone has… Continue Reading
Skyline shows off unique concentrating solar arrays
Skyline Solar, maker of uniquely-shaped concentrating photovoltaic panels, has unveiled its first demo system in San Jose, Calif. The company struck a deal with the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority to generate more than 30 kilowatts of power.
The architecture of Skyline’s installations sets it apart from other solar equipment makers like Ausra, Heliovolt and Optisolar. Shaped like a W, each long row of panels uses inexpensive reflective material to bounce more sunlight directly onto solar… Continue Reading
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 months… Continue Reading
Dave Duffield’s business app company Workday raises $75M
It looks like the era of humongous funding rounds isn’t completely over. Workday , a startup that provides online software to help companies manage things like human resources and finances, has raised $75 million in a fifth round of funding.
The Pleasanton, Calif. company was co-founded by Dave Duffield back in 2005, after he sold his previous startup, PeopleSoft, to Oracle for $10.3 billion. (Duffield is still the company’s chief executive, and remains the major stakeholder… Continue Reading
Cloud provider Cassatt close to evaporating
Cassatt, one of the first companies in the cloud computing space, may have to shutter after spending its full $100 million in venture capital and failing to find an appropriate buyer, reports VentureWire. If one can’t be found, the San Jose, Calif. firm will be forced to declare bankruptcy.
Focused primarily on management of virtual data centers, Cassatt previously took capital from Hewlett-Packard, In-Q-Tel, New Enterprise Associates, Portcullis Partners, Quatris Fund and Warburg Pincus.
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 successfully… Continue Reading
The bizarre case of Oak Investment Partners
The venture capital industry is in a lot of pain, saddled with so much money, it can’t invest it properly. With the Internet boom over, and investors pulling back from supporting venture capital firms, we’ll see a lot of the mediocre VC firms finally die (see our list of the walking dead).
Which brings me to Oak Investment Partners.
Almost three years ago, I wrote how Oak Investment Partners had become the largest venture capital firm. Despite… Continue Reading
Philanthropic fund of funds Legacy closes $276M
Legacy Venture, the Palo Alto, Calif. firm that holds a portfolio of other investment funds and distributes returns to charities, announced that it closed a new $276 million fund, its fifth, despite adverse economic conditions. Basically, Legacy takes money from limited partners who commit their profits to charities of their choice. This allows these partners to amplify philanthropic contributions that they would make regardless.
In the past, Legacy has worked with well-established firms like August Capital,… Continue Reading
Actelis scores $4.7M for copper-wire ethernet
Actelis Networks, maker of equipment that lets ethernet run over copper wires, tacked $4.7 million more onto its previously raised $15 million sixth round of funding, reports VentureWire. With fiber optics becoming too pricey for many businesses, copper has become a popular alternative.
The Fremont, Calif.-based company says that of its 150 clients most are telecommunications companies. But it has recently caught business from several California cities (including Sacramento) that want to use copper ethernet for… Continue Reading
Thumbplay wrangles $6M for mobile content distribution
Thumbplay, provider of ringtones, wallpapers, games and other content specifically tailored to mobile phones, announced that it brought in $6 million in a sixth round of funding to cushion its business against the downturn. Based in New York, the company says that with the funds, it should find itself poised to expand rapidly once the slump ends sometime next year.
Not that Thumplay isn’t already pretty well positioned to take advantage of the opportunities that do exist… Continue Reading
Audience dials up $15M to suppress noise on cell phones
Audience, maker of mobile chips that can dampen background noise when people speak on their cell phones, just brought in $15 million in a fourth round of funding. This brings the Mountain View, Calif. company’s total capital to $60 million since its inception in 2004.
Audience claims that it modeled its product on the normal functioning of the human ear — allowing it to block out some sounds while focusing others. This allows users to have… Continue Reading
GridPoint lands more funds for smarter utility use
GridPoint, one of the largest companies in the emerging smartgrid sector, announced that it has brought in an undisclosed sum from Craton Equity Partners. Already working with several investor-owned utilities like Duke Energy Corp. and Xcel Energy, GridPoint says its system automatically manages energy loads and storage, integrates renewable sources and can be used to power electric vehicles more efficiently.
That last function is of particular importance to GridPoint, which acquired V2Green, a company that makes… Continue Reading
Massachusetts shines on solar co. Konarka, loans $5M
Thin-film solar company Konarka just landed a $5 million loan from the Emerging Technology Fund of Massachusetts Development Finance Agency and the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust’s Business Expansion Initiative. The funds will be used to build out its new solar material factory in New Bedford, Mass., which has been open since October.
Konarka is known for making plastic solar film capable of turning natural and artificial light into power. Its current manufacturing plant can make enough… Continue Reading
Public biotech firms Cadence, Affymax draw $128M from bargain-hunting VCs
Much has been written about how the IPO market froze out biotech companies in 2008, but it looks like times are also tough for those who went public before the economy soured. Cadence Pharmaceuticals has seen a dip in stock price from $9 to $7.53 and drug-maker Affymax has dropped from $25 to $14.12 a share since their IPOs in 2006. But VCs hunting for bargains just agreed to infuse the two companies with $86.6… Continue Reading
Medical device maker Emphasys on the auction block
Emphasys Medical, maker of a valve that diverts air to only the healthy parts of lungs in emphysema patients, has put itself up for sale after the Food and Drug Administration rejected its lead product in December. This is the second relatively recent defeat for the Redwood City, Calif.-based company, which had to withdraw its IPO filing last May. Since then, all but five of its 50 employees have been laid off.
Founded in 2000, Emphasys… Continue Reading
GoodGuide raises $3.73M for ethical shopping
GoodGuide, a site that helps shoppers find healthy, sustainable, and ethical products, has raised $3.73 million in a first round of venture funding.
The concept behind GoodGuide is rather obvious, but it was also tough to pull all the necessary data together. That’s why there are plenty of other sites offering information about how products measure up in a specific area — say, environmental friendliness — but none attempting to aggregate as much data from as… Continue Reading
South Korea’s Nurien raises $10 million for fashion-oriented virtual world
Nurien Software has been making a splash with its demos of virtual characters dressed as fashion models striding down runways in virtual fashion shows. This strategy has helped the company raise $10 million in a second institutional round of funding.
The funding suggests that investors are still excited about virtual worlds. According to market researcher In-stat, virtual worlds are expected to hit 1 billion registered users and $3 billion in revenues by 2012. And since Nurien… Continue Reading
SolFocus takes on $47.5M more in quest to sell concentrating solar
SolFocus, the most heavily-funded concentrating solar startup around, has just drawn a bit further ahead of the pack with $47.5 million in fresh capital. With the money, the company has edged near $150 million in total funding, and with luck, widespread installation of a currently rare type of solar panel.
In the concentrating photovoltaic (CPV) arrays of SolFocus and similar companies, a tiny, highly-efficient solar cell becomes the focus of sunlight intensified many times over by… Continue Reading