Textbook rental site Chegg.com raises another $57m

Textbook rental site Chegg.com raises another $57m

Popular textbook rental site Chegg.com continues to raise tremendous amounts of money — today it announced a $57 million fourth round, as well as $55 million in credit and debt.

The Santa Clara, Calif. company says it will use the extra $112 million (!) to meet the demands of its rapid growth. Chegg applies a Netflix-like model (where you check out the books you need at the beginning of the semester then send it back to… Continue Reading

Coskata looks to stimulus to finish commercial biofuel plant

Coskata looks to stimulus to finish commercial biofuel plant

Even though cellulosic ethanol maker Coskata just brought in $40 million in a third round of funding in November, it needs more to finish off its new commercial-scale plant — and the government stimulus package for biofuels looks like just the ticket.

Chief executive Bill Roe told VentureWire that Coskata is “very optimistic” about its chances of receiving the low-interest loans and loan guarantees from the Department of Energy soon. [Update: Previously, this post stated that… Continue Reading

Zend Technologies gets $7M for PHP application support

Zend Technologies, the company started by the founders of the web scripting language PHP, has raised $7 million from TriplePoint Capital for expansion.

The Cupertino, Calif. company makes software that maintains and supports commercial PHP applications. Its last round of funding, for $20 million, was raised in 2006.

Zend’s performance hinges on the success of PHP as a scripting tool. For more on the company and its competition, check out our extensive coverage.

SchoolNet raises $12.5 million to expand parent-teacher community site

SchoolNet raises $12.5 million to expand parent-teacher community site

SchoolNet has raised $12.5 million in financing to expand its efforts to create a community for parents and teachers around K-12 education.

This financing includes a combination of equity and loans from Velocity Financial Group, TriplePoint Capital and the New York City Investment Fund. The company provides a portal for those interested in education; the features include a search engine with results from trusted K-12 sources, opinion pages on a variety of educational subjects, strategies for… Continue Reading

ClearApp, application performance management co., raises $5M in debt

ClearApp, a Sunnyvale, Calif. company that sells application performance management software, will announce tomorrow it has raised $5 million in debt financing from TriplePoint Capital.

ClearApp monitors and manages SOA, portal, J2EE, and complex composite applications.

In June, ClearApp completed a $14.2 million second round of financing led by Sierra Ventures. The latest round brings the total funding amount raised to more than $25 million.

From the statement:

Adoption of service-oriented architectures (SOA) continues to grow,… Continue Reading