06/26/2008 – Venture Capital Bank (VCB), which has maintained a consistent growth pattern since its inception in 2005 and posted maiden year profit of $30.5 million 2006 and $33 million in 2007, announced the launch of a $15 million Venture Capital Fund Bahrain. The fund is targeting an IRR of 30 per cent per annum net of all expenses, before performance fees.

The new fund, according to the top management, is the first Bahrain-dedicated venture capital fund. This Fund, a first in a series of such funds to target Bahrain and other promising MENA countries, will tap opportunities in the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) or start-up businesses, Abdullatif Mohammed Janahi board member and CEO Venture Capital Bank said.

05/29/2008 – Fundraising by private equity firms in the commodities and energy sectors is up 85% compared with the same period last year following the latest fund close of $2bn (€1.3bn) by US-based Denham Capital Management. The close, the fifth in the energy and commodities sectors so far this year, takes 2008 fundraising in the sectors to $7.8bn, an increase of $6.6bn on the same period last year, according to data provider Private Equity Intelligence.

03/27/2008 – Bucking the recent financial turmoil and capital scarcity prevalent in the Indian and global markets, Kotak Investment Advisors Limited (KIAL), a subsidiary of Kotak Mahindra Bank, today announced the first & final closure of their third Private Equity fund ? Kotak India Growth Fund II with a total commitment of USD 440mn. The Fund has been raised within a period of less than three months from the client base of Kotak Mahindra, both institutional investors and high net worth individuals. KIAL, which focuses exclusively on managing the Alternate Assets business of the Kotak Mahindra Group, now has Assets Under Management USD 1.4bn split almost evenly between two asset classes namely ? Private Equity and Realty Funds.

12/10/2007 – Arch Venture Partners, the 21-year-old venture capital firm whose Seattle area investments include Allozyne, Trubion Pharmaceuticals and VLST, has raised a $400 million venture fund.
Arch's Robert NelsenIt is the firm's seventh fund. The money will be invested in early-stage companies in the biotechnology, advanced materials, nanotechnology and semiconductor sectors.
Arch maintains offices in Austin, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. Its three managing partners here include Robert Nelsen, Patrick Ennis and Steve Gillis, a former Immunex executive who previously founded Corixa.

BASF Venture Capital America Inc., Fremont, CA, has invested in ARCH Venture Fund VII

09/22/2007 – SoftTechVC just announced a new $12 million early stage venture fund today at the TechCrunch40 conference. The new fund will be called SoftTech VC II.

SoftTech VC, has been actively investing in startups over the last few years and has had notable successes such as Truveo (acquired by AOL for a rumored $50 million), Userplane (acquired by AOL for a rumored $35 million), MyBlogLog (acquired by Yahoo for $10 million), Kaboodle (acquired by Hearst for a rumored $30-40 million), Mayas Mom (acquired by BabyCenter for $7 million), Dogster, Kongregate, Edgeio and many others.
The firm most recently formed a $12M seed fund that will also focus on the consumer Internet space, aiming at investing in 30 to 40 companies over the next 3 years.

08/10/2007 – With early-stage investments showing new strength during the second quarter, venture capitalists reported the largest number of deals since 2001. There were 977 deals, up 15.6% from the 856 funded in the first quarter of this year and up 6.1% from the 920 deals funded during the second quarter of 2006.

Venture capitalists invested $7.12 billion during the recent second quarter, according to statistics released last week by the National Venture Capital Association of Arlington, Va., PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP of New York and Thomson Financial, a New York unit of Stamford, Conn.-based Thomson Corp. The investments represented a 2.5% increase from the $6.9 billion invested during the second quarter of 2006, but a drop of 4.1% from the $7.43 billion invested in this year’s first quarter.

05/30/2007 - Lehman Brothers has raised a $300M venture capital fund as the firm continues to grow its private equity business. The fund is the same size as Lehman’s last VC fund, which was raised in 2003, according to the firm.
Lehman’s roots in venture capital go back to 1995, when it first started a technology venture capital effort.
Since then the firm has racked up investments in 70 companies in the software, semiconductor, electronic and communications equipment sectors, and generally invests $8m to $12m in each company.

05/16/2007 - Milestone Venture Partners, a New York city-based, early stage venture fund, today announced it has raised $50 million across two closings for Milestone Venture Partners III LP and its affiliates.
Milestone will continue to invest in technology-enhanced service businesses in the greater New York metropolitan area. The firm seeks business plans from entrepreneurial companies with unique offerings, marquee customers and proven
management.

04/23/2007 - Pension funds, financial institutions, family offices and other investors pumped $258 million into the Edison Venture Fund VI, 82 percent over the previous fund launched by Lawrenceville-based Edison Venture Fund. Led by founder and managing partner John Martinson, the fund engages in such transactions as venture capital, expansion, acqusisition, management buyout, recapitalization and secondary stock offerings. Edison has invested in 151 companies since its inception in 1986, including financial technology, pharmaceutical business services, communications and application software firms. Currently, Edison has $525 million under management with investments in 48 companies. Initial investments range from $4 to $7 million.

03/02/2007 - O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (OATV) today announced the closing of its initial $51 million fund. The fund will focus on seed and early-stage investments that leverage partner O'Reilly Media, Inc.'s previous investments and relationships with the technology early adopters they have dubbed the "alpha geeks." The fund's Managing Directors include Mark P. Jacobsen and Bryce T. Roberts. Said Roberts of the fundraising, "We were very pleased with the reception we received from the LP community. Our differentiated story and properly aligned fund size attracted a stable of very influential individual and institutional investors."

02/25/2007 - Founded in January 2006, Los Angeles-based Passenger sells a software service that allows companies, including the Coca Cola Co., Sara Lee Corp., and ABC Inc., a division of the Walt Disney Co., to target their best customers with exclusive content and services. Think Passenger just raised $2.5 million.

02/16/2007 - Early-stage venture capital firm OVP Venture Partners (OVP) has announced a final close on its seventh fund at $250 million, well exceeding its target of $200 million and at its self-imposed hard cap. After a first close of $207 million in May 2006, OVP accepted additional investments from two limited partners, the Meketa Investment Group in Westwood, MA, and the endowment of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA. OVP now has over $750 million in capital under management.

02/15/2007 - Irvine-based Sendio has raised $4M in a Series A venture capital round, socalTECH has learned, and will be announcing the round formally next week. The funding comes from KH Growth Equity Fund and Momentum Venture Management, a venture acceleration firm headquartered in Los Angeles. Sendio develops enterprise anti-spam products based on sender address verification. KH Growth Equity Fund is an investment fund run by Kline Hawkes & Company.

02/02/2007 - Cambridge-based N2N Commerce Inc. reports closing on a $30 million series A round of financing, which company officials say is one of the software industry's largest first-round investments since 2003. Investors are General Catalyst Partners, a Cambridge venture capital firm, and Ohio-based Limited Brands Inc., which operates 3,545 specialty stores, including Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, Express, Limited Stores and other retail brands.

01/31/2007 - Vizu Answers announced a $2.9 million round of financing today for its poll based market research, led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Marketers can conduct self-serve polling campaigns by designing a poll, picking a demographic, and having it syndicated to relevant publishers’ sites, who get a kick-back for listing the poll by CPM varying by placement on the page. It’s like poll-based AdSense. Publishers can set a minimum CPM for the types of polls they’re willing to show in that poll zone.

01/02/2007 - UK private shop HgCapital said it has raised 300 million Euros ($395 million) for a fund earmarked to finance renewable power projects across Europe, Dow Jones reports. Backers of the fund include Dutch pension fund PGGM and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System. Portfolio companies in the Renewable Power Partners Fund include Wind Direct, developer of wind farms in the U.K.

12/29/2006 - Southern Capitol Ventures has closed on its second fund—oversubscribed at $15 million—and is actively looking for deals.
The Raleigh-based firm, which launched in 2003 with a first fund of $4.5 million, landed its first institutional investor (Square 1 Bank of Durham) as well as Jim Goodmon, chief executive officer of Capitol Broadcasting for its new fund. (Capitol is the parent company of WRAL Local Tech Wire.)

12/16/2006 - ITOCHU Corporation has announced that it will invest JPY 1 billion (4% of outstanding shares after investment) in solar energy company NorSun AS (Oslo, Norway), which is planning to produce monocrystalline silicon wafers for solar cells.
NorSun was established in December 2005 by Dr Alf Bjorseth, who is a founder and former CEO of the Renewable Energy Corporation ASA (REC), the world's largest manufacturer of solar-grade silicon and multi crystalline wafers, to develop a broadly-based business in the solar industry.

11/15/2006 - SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Real Girls Media Network, Inc., an online publishing company, announced today that it closed its Series A funding with 3i and WaldenVC. Concurrent with the funding, David Silverman, partner with 3i, and Steve Eskenazi, managing director at WaldenVC, have joined the company's board of directors.
By combining editorial, user-generated content, and community, Real Girls Media Network aims to build the leading online destinations that address the totality of women's lives, not just specific life events. Unlike existing advertising-supported Web sites, RGM will enable women of all ages to easily submit and publish their opinions and stories. The first Web site, DivineCaroline.com, which is due to launch in early 2007, is targeted for women aged 25 to 54. Additional sites aimed at other age groups will follow in 2007.

10/26/2006 - edgeio corporation, a leader in online listings announced today that it has raised $5 million in the first close of a Series A round of financing. The round was led by Intel Capital and also included an investment from Transcosmos Investments and Business Development Inc, a Japanese public company with a Silicon Valley investment arm focused on Internet-based U.S. technology companies expanding into the Japanese marketplace. Investors in the company’s angel funding had their investment converted into A round stock. These include Ron Conway, Jeff Clavier, Claudio Chiuchiarelli, Frank Caufield Jr., RSS Investors, Millenium Technology Ventures, Michael Tanne, Auren Hoffman, Sam Perry, Bill McCabe and Louis Monier.

10/19/2006 - NComputing out of Orange, CA has raised $8M in Series A funding from BA Venture Partners thanks to an impressive showing at the recent Demo event, an pedigreed founder and a sweet product.
Stephen Dukker, former CEO of eMachines is the founder of NComputing. His simple concept is that the standard multi desktop setting is cost wasteful. Ncomputing's answer is to combine an $11 chip and two PCI cards to a standard white-box PC, enabling it to serve up the Windows desktop and other applications, including video, to seven monitors. So for the price of a $490 server, the company delivers seven computing desktops.

09/12/2006 - TripConnect.com, the Internet's first-of-its kind social networking site for travel advice, today announced that it has closed $1 million of first round funding led by Masthead Venture Partners and individual private investors. "Online travel is the largest single segment in e-commerce, and remains a robust area for development. By focusing on the idea of leveraging one's own personal network for travel advice, TripConnect.com is uniquely qualified to serve as a definitive source of reliable destination research for travelers everywhere," says Daniel K. Flatley, General Partner at Masthead Venture Partners.

08/29/2006 - A new company called iTaggit raised $1.04 million from some big-name backers in its Series A offering. iTaggit is working on Web-based services and products to help people manage their personal assets. Further details about what the company plans to do was not disclosed. iTaggit plans to launch its service in the fourth quarter of 2006. The company was founded by CEO David Altounian, founder of Austin-based Motion Computing Inc., and Charles Zeller, iTaggit's senior vice president of development.

08/24/2006 - Pleasanton-based Arcxis Biotechnologies, a biomedical device firm developing products for rapid diagnostics, pathogen handling, and sample preparation, has raised $2.25M in Series A funding. The funding came from Claremont Creek Ventures. Arcxis said it would use the funding to hire key employee talent, make equipment purchases, and initiate commercial development programs.

08/16/2006 - Plextronics, Inc., a world leader in developing active layer technology for printed electronic devices, is pleased to announce the close of a $13.1 million Series A financing. Birchmere Ventures led the round which included significant capital from Firelake Capital, Draper Triangle Ventures as well as other new and existing investors. Plextronics has raised a total of $16.4 million since its July 2002 inception.

08/10/2006 - Imaginova Corp., which was formerly known as Space.com, announced it has secured $15 million in a series C round of venture capital with Steelpoint Capital Partners LP leading the latest funding.The round will support the company's e-commerce and media strategy of seeking consumers with an interest in science and technology.
The company commissioned a study by the OMD advertising division of New York-based OmnicomMediaGroup earlier this year in which it identified an audience of 60 million that are avid consumers of science-related content. Imaginova CEO Daniel Stone says, "We're going to sell that audience on behalf of advertisers on one hand, and we're going to direct them to our e-commerce storefronts on the other.

07/27/2006 - GarageBand.com, a music Web site, said Wednesday it raised $2.5 million in equity financing in its first round. The San Francisco company got money from Menlo Park-based Khosla Ventures and from individual investors including David Weiden (a new Khosla partner, who joined this year) and MTV co-founder Bob Pittman. Both Pittman and Vinod Khosla took seats on the site's advisory board.
GarageBand is testing a new music-oriented social network by which it hopes to make money off of users of Cupertino-based Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes.

07/20/2006 - ShopWiki, whose Web site that allows users to write and edit product reviews in the same way Wikipedia encyclopedia articles are group-created and –edited, has gotten $6.2 million in a first round of financing from Generation Partners, a private equity firm. ShopWiki was created by three of the founders of DoubleClick, the Internet-advertising network. The money will be used for international expansion.

07/12/2006 - Engage.com, an online dating web site, raised $5 million in its first round of venture funding. The San Francisco company said Advanced Technology Ventures led the round, and that its general partner Steve Baloff will take a seat on Engage's board. Revolution Ventures, the Founders Fund and Josh Kopelman also gave money. Engage will spend the money on developing more products, hiring new employees and on marketing. Suneet Wadhwa, the CEO of Engage, and one of its founders, also helped to found Snapfish. Karen Wallace is the other founder.

07/06/2006 - Tyzx, a Menlo Park company that specializes in three-dimensional video cameras, launched with great fanfare in 2002, when its technology was leaked to the New York Times. Four years later, the company is still refining its technology and trying to break into the market. It has just raised $4 million in venture capital from Tekata, a global auto parts giant, and says it is involved in some top-secret homeland security projects.

07/03/2006 - Mozes, a Palo Alto start-up that lets you send it an SMS (text message) to get information about a person, a band or other product, has raised an angel round of $750,000. Media analyst Paul Kagan is among the investors. It is the latest move by a start-up to exploit SMS' growing popularity, especially among youth, to help companies like Microsoft market their products.

06/21/2006 - Compiere Inc. has secured its first external funding to the tune of $6 million and is planning to relocate its headquarters, the open-source midmarket business applications company said Tuesday.
The vendor makes the open-source integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management Compiere software that can be used on-premise or can be hosted. In a different take on the traditional open-source model, the company focuses on developing and supporting the software, leaving product distribution to its 70-plus global partner network. There are currently about 240 paying Compiere customers, along with more than 1 million downloads of the open-source software.

06/12/2006 - Virent Energy Systems is developing technology to turn biomass into hydrogen, natural gas, and biodiesel. Virent Energy Systems raised a $7.5-million round of venture financing Monday, another indication of interest in new sources of energy as oil prices remain above $70 per barrel. Cargill Ventures led the round. Other investors included Honda Strategic Ventures, Venture Investors, and Advantage Capital Partners.
The money will be used to accelerate development of Virent’s technology, which turns biomass—such as sugars from corn or glycerol—into energy in many forms, including hydrogen, natural gas, ethane, propane, butane, and biodiesel.

06/02/2006 - TutorVista, an online tutoring company that pairs students in the United States with tutors in India, raised $2 million in its first round of venture funding. Sequoia Capital India led the round, and the company's angel investors also gave money. TutorVista's U.S. headquarters is in San Francisco, though it is staffed by just one employee -- Patty Perry, vice president of sales and marketing for the United States. Her job is to spend some of that venture capital and shift the company's advertising strategy from an emphasis on search-engine keywords to other, more traditional methods.

05/31/2006 - Online real estate broker Redfin, a Seattle startup that wants to grab business from traditional real estate agents, has raised $8 million in new venture capital to fund its expansion into the San Francisco Bay area and develop new Web site features.
Vulcan Capital, the investment arm of Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen's Vulcan Inc., led the financing round. Other investors were BEV Capital of Stamford, Conn., The Hillman Company of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Redfin's original venture investor, Seattle's Madrona Venture Group.

05/23/2006 - Benchmark Capital has invested $15 million in Bebo Inc., a social networking Web site that is expanding in the United States. San Francisco-based Bebo's site started up in July 2005 and it now claims 24 million registered members, many of them in the United Kingdom, Ireland and New Zealand. It plans to spend the money from this first funding round on expansion in the United States and on a new office in London.

05/18/2006 - BioNanomatrix LLC, an emerging company developing a breakthrough nanoscale whole genome imaging and analytic platform, today announced receipt of a two-year grant from the National Cancer Institute and new seed financing from two venture investors -- New York-based 21 Ventures LLC and Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Ben Franklin Technology Partners has made a seed investment in BioNanomatrix and 21Ventures is providing a bridge financing to help support the company until its expected Series A financing closes later this year.

05/15/2006 - Shanghai-based Toodou.com raised $8.5 million in a Series B financing round, co-led by Granite Global Ventures and JAFCO Asia. IDG Technology Venture, the Series A round investor, also participated in the round.

05/08/2006 - DreamFactory, a leading provider of adaptive on demand applications, today announced a $5.8 million Series A round of funding led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). The funding will enable DreamFactory to expand the company’s sales and marketing operations as well as product development teams.

05/01/2006 - With plans to raise as much as $10 million in Series A financing in the coming year, Lightspeed Audio Labs Inc. has closed on an initial $1.25 million seed round from New York-based venture firm SAS Investors.

04/28/2006 - NeoAccel, a pioneering innovator of next-generation Internet security solutions, announced its Series A3 funding round of approximately $4 million led by Baring Private Equity Partners' India Fund (ING’s former venture arm) and existing investors. At next week’s Interop Las Vegas 2006, NeoAccel will introduce the next generation of its flagship product, SSL VPN-Plus Enterprise Edition Version 2.0.

04/22/2006 - It's rare for Intel Capital to lead a VC deal, much less go single handedly into a new venture. But that is what it has done with Ireland's AdaptiveMobile, a mobile security and filtering software developer. Intel invested €4.6M ($5.5 million) in what looks like a first round of funding for the three year old firm. Its software products are targeted at three markets: mobile network operatrors, companies, and mobilephone subscribers.

04/10/2006 - Jigsaw Data Corp. closed its series C round of venture funding Tuesday after raising $12 million. The San Mateo company is an online market for buying, selling and trading business information. A venture firm from Texas, Austin Ventures, led the round. El Dorado Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners, both investors in earlier rounds, also gave money this time. Thomas Ball of Austin Ventures took a seat on Jigsaw's board of directors as part of the financing. Jigsaw will spend the money on creating new products and on marketing.

04/05/2006 - Rave Wireless announced today it has closed $12 million in Series B funding. This latest round of financing was led by RRE Ventures, which joined existing investors Bain Capital Ventures and Sigma Ventures. RRE General Partner and Founder Stuart Ellman will join Rave Wireless’s board of directors. In addition, the company announced Professor Bill Sahlman of the Harvard Business School will join as an advisor.
Rave Wireless’s unique business model of directly serving communities such as colleges and universities with GPS-enhanced mobile safety, social networking, academic and local commerce applications has resulted in partnerships with both leading universities and the nation’s largest wireless carriers. Market demand for Rave Wireless’s mobile applications, such as the recently launched Rave Guardian that provides students with a location-based personal alarm device, has been extremely strong. The new round of financing allows the company to accelerate its growth in line with market demand.

03/27/2006 - Search engine provider Insider Pages Inc. said Monday it has raised $8.5 million in venture funding and will relocate to the Silicon Valley. The company said it is relocating from Pasadena to Redwood City to consolidate all its operations in one location and provide easy access to talent in the Valley.
Insider Pages said most of its new funding came from Sequoia Capital, which has an office in Menlo Park, and Softbank Capital, which has an office in Newport Beach

03/21/2006 - A new online music service called La la Media aims to offer full-length CDs for $1 by letting members trade used physical discs, in a new twist on the popular but legally challenged practice of online song swapping. La la founders argue that, unlike underground online file-sharing services, which have been sued for copyright infringement, La la is protected under an exception to the US Copyright Act. Backed with $9 million in funding by Bain Capital and Ignition Partners, La la works like an online music co-op by enabling members to trade physical CDs they own for physical CDs they want, La-la co-founder Bill Nguyen said.

03/17/2006 - Adknowledge, Inc., a technology firm focused on helping small businesses better market to online consumers, announced today that it has sold a minority ownership interest to Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) for $48 million. As part of the investment in Adknowledge, two TCV partners, Henry Feinberg and Will Griffith, will join the Adknowledge board of directors.

03/13/2006 - First round funding of $4.65 million was announced Monday by scanR Inc., which provides a service that lets camera phones and digital cameras scan, copy and fax. Palo Alto-based scanR said the financing was led by Menlo Park-based Trinity Ventures. Thomvest International, which has an office in Los Altos, joined in the round. Other investors included Don Listwin, former president and CEO of Openwave Systems, and James Joaquin, current CEO of Xoom.com and former CEO of Ofoto.

03/04/2006 - The Northwest Energy Technology Collaborative is a joint effort of business, government, non-profit and educational institutions determined to accelerate the emergence and growth of the energy technology industry in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With world-class university and research centers and more than 300 new energy companies, our region is poised to become a global hub for emerging power technology.

03/01/2006 - TelTel, a provider of SIP-based global Internet telephony services with presence-enabled features, today announced that it has secured $8.8 million in Series A venture capital. Purple Communications Ltd., Acorn Angels and Parawin Venture Capital participated in the funding. The investors selected TelTel because it is the first to offer an immediate turnkey VoIP solution that enables service providers and enterprises to rapidly deploy VoIP and multimedia solutions to their customers. With over 1.5 million registered users and partnerships with service providers worldwide, TelTel hosts the world's largest SIP-based Internet telephony user community.

02/21/2006 - Wellkeeper announces that it has closed a $1.2 million Series A financing round, led by New Mexico venture capital firm, Verge. These funds will be used to enhance product/service functionality, and grow the company’s sales and marketing efforts.
Wellkeeper is a remote monitoring company serving independent operators in the oil and gas industry. The company’s technology enables oilfield personnel to quickly locate potential problems, thus increasing production or avoiding spills, and to prioritize their time and, increase productivity. This level of affordable Internet-based support has not been available to small- and medium-sized independents until now. In the southwestern US alone, independent operators constitute a $1.2B market.

02/17/2006 - WellGen has secured $3 million in series B financing, which it will use to fund human clinical trials of its ingredients developed through nutrigenomics to target obesity and inflammation. One of the most exciting new areas in food and wellness, nutrigenomics involves working out which chemicals in foods have the ability to turn on and off certain genes that are responsible for disease prevention.
The planned human trials, expected to begin in 2006, involve an ingredient derived from orange peel. Animal studies were completed in late 2005.

02/11/2006 - Newport Media, Inc., an innovative fabless semiconductor company providing mobile TV receivers, announced the closing of a $25 million Series B financing led by Oak Investment Partners. Previous investors Benchmark Capital, Venrock Associates, Global Catalyst Partners and Pinnacle Ventures joined Oak in this round. Newport Media has raised over $36 million to date.

02/09/2006 - GameLogic announced today it raised a total of $18.6 million in Series B financing led by Bain Capital Ventures. Existing investors General Catalyst Partners and Maveron, LLC, also participated in the round, which was funded in tranches. GameLogic's new products and services, such as its unique PlayAway™ platform, provide regulatory-compliant gaming designed to enable legal casinos and government-sponsored lotteries to stay connected to their players virtually anywhere there is a computer.

02/01/2006 - InnoCentive today announced it has closed a US$9 million Series A Preferred venture capital financing round led by Spencer Trask Ventures, Inc., a New York-based venture capital firm. Additionally, joining the round were Lilly Ventures and Omidyar Network. It was also announced that InnoCentive founder, Alpheus Bingham, Ph.D., has been appointed as InnoCentive president and CEO, and will retire from his position as vice president for Lilly Research Laboratories, a division of Eli Lilly and Company.

01/24/2006 - Clarabridge, an emerging leader in the text mining software space, today announced it has received a $3 million investment from Boulder Ventures to continue product development and the expansion of Clarabridge's sales and marketing efforts. This funding occurs as part of spinning off Clarabridge from business intelligence (BI) consultancy, Claraview, into an independently operating enterprise software vendor.

01/17/2006 - Gather.com, a Web site that serves as a gateway to user-generated content, has received $6 million in a second round of funding. Primary investors are Jim Manzi, former chief executive officer at Lotus Development Corp., and Allen & Company. Gather.com of Boston will use the money to expand its membership base and Manzi will join Gather.com's board as a result of the investment.

01/11/2006 - Coremetrics founder and Shop.org board member Brett Hurt today introduced Bazaarvoice, a new company aimed at online brands who want to enlist their customers in building their business. Guided by Hurt, who successfully serviced over 400 of the world's largest multi-channel retailers while at Coremetrics, Bazaarvoice helps CMOs and eCommerce executives drive greater business impact from word of mouth, the oldest form of marketing. Bazaarvoice also announced that it has secured nearly $4 million in a Series A round led by Austin Ventures.

01/10/2006 - Index Ventures and Battery Ventures today announced they have co-led a $10M Series A investment in Spot Runner, the first Internet-based advertising agency that makes it fast, easy and affordable for local businesses to advertise on TV. Comerica Bank and others also provided funding for this round. Spot Runner’s web-based service allows businesses to air personalized, high-quality television ads in their local markets. Spot Runner offers a full-service package – commercial production, media planning and ad time – for a fraction of the cost and time of traditional broadcast advertising. A complete campaign can be purchased for as little as $500. In contrast, traditional methods can take weeks and cost tens of thousand of dollars to produce a commercial of comparable quality.

01/03/2006 - The Stoughton, Mass., company Spirus Medical Inc. said the money will support its sales and marketing strategy for its Endo-Ease gastrointestinal device, a low cost and flexible alternative to traditional endoscopes. Along with the financing round, Spirus also announced it has won 510(k) clearance from the Food and Drug Administration to market the Endo-Ease in the U.S. Venture capital firms BioVentures Investors in Cambridge, Village Ventures in Williamstown, Mass., and Point Judith Capital in East Greenwich, R.I., led the recent financing round. Spirus said a handful of individual investors also participated in the stock sale.

12/27/2005 - ClearPoint Metrics reportedly has raised $3.5 million in financing as it develops software that analyzes the performance of network security measures. VentureWire reported the amount of the funding, and Private Equity Week reported the company's backers include Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) of Cupertino, Calif. and JK&B Capital of Chicago. Cambridge, Mass.-based ClearPoint Metrics founders include Jim Acquaviva, formerly chief executive of Kada Systems, a former mobile software developer in Burlington, Mass.; and Betsy Nichols, a former developer with Computer Associates International Inc. (NYSE: CA) of Islandia, N.Y.

12/21/2005 - Web instant messaging service Meebo Inc. of Palo Alto has secured a $3.5 million first round of financing. Meebo was founded this spring by Stanford University-trained engineers Elaine Wherry and Sandy Jen. Seth Sternberg, a former Stanford Business School student and Yale University graduate, is also a co-founder.

12/14/2005 - Solar cell developer Cyrium Technologies has secured $3 million in venture capital and officially announced Edward Sloot's appointment as the new CEO.
The developer of high efficiency solar cells using semiconductor nanotechnology is looking to capitalize on the need for alternative power sources. Cyrium was profiled as one of the OBJ's 2005 Startups to Watch and said in November it was expecting to close a VC round before the end of the year.

12/07/2005 - Trovix, Inc., a leading provider of intelligent search technology, today announced a $5.25 million round of Series A financing from USVP, 3i and Stanford. These funds will be used to support expanding sales, marketing and engineering efforts. Trovix was founded with the goal of solving one of the most challenging technical problems in computerized search: how to evaluate unstructured documents and make decisions on information the same way a person would. Trovix's first product - Trovix Recruit - is the first ever Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that uses search technology sophisticated enough to consistently identify the best candidates out of thousands of resumes. The search technology in Trovix Recruit is based on ten years of research initiated at MIT.