Roundup, deals, VC
Highland Digs Digg, Oak Investment Partners Charges Up Greenvolts, U.S. Genomics Befriends Becton Dickinson, & More Boston-Area Deals News
Rebecca Zacks 9/29/08
This last week was a good one for smaller-scale deal making among New England’s tech and life sciences firms.
—Oak Investment Partners of Westport, CT, put $30 million into San Francisco cleantech startup Greenvolts, which is developing solar energy farms that use vast arrays of reflectors to concentrate the sun’s rays on high-efficiency photovoltaic cells.
—U.S. Genomics of Woburn, MA, a developer of tools for biodefense and diagnostics, got a $4.5 million investment from Becton, Dickinson & Co., and formed a strategic partnership with the company focused on building a diagnostic platform for infectious diseases.
—Cambridge, MA-based CityVoter, a provider of city-specific online content, raised $2.6 million in a Series B financing round led by Allen & Company and existing investor Dace Ventures.
—Swaptree of Boston, which runs a site that helps people trade used books, CDs, DVDs, and video games, raised $3.35 million in a Series C financing round from Safeguard Scientifics.
—Watertown, MA-based casual gaming firm Pangea Media acquired LaughNetwork of Kentucky for an undisclosed sum.
—Highland Capital Partners of Lexington, MA, led a $28.7 million Series C funding round in San Francisco-based social news site Digg. Highland was joined in the deal by existing investors Greylock Partners, SVB Capital, and Omidyar Network.
—Medical-record software maker ChartOne of Burlington, MA, was acquired by Alpharetta, GA-based HealthPort for an undisclosed sum.
—RockPort Capital Partners of Boston and Menlo Park, CA, co-led a $6 million investment in San Francisco’s Sustainable Spaces, a startup aiming to help homeowners monitor their energy use and the environmental health of their homes. The money came out of RockPort’s new $450 million cleantech fund.
—Tipjoy of Cambridge, MA, a developer of technology to let Web users tip blog creators, raised $1 million in a Series A funding round led by New York’s Betaworks and joined by the Accelerator Group, David Shen Ventures, and private investors Chris Sacca, Taavet Hinrikus, and Ron Bouganim.
