05/09/08

Brookfield Renewable Power Comes to Bay State

Brookfield Renewable Power, a Canadian energy company, is planning to open a new US headquarters in Marlborough, MA. The firm has a $13 billion portfolio in hydroelectric plants and wind farms across North America and Brazil. It is owned by Brookfield Asset Management (NYSE: BAM), based in Toronto.

05/08/08

Novartis Increases Stake in Alnylam

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY), a Cambridge, MA, biotech firm working on RNAi-based therapies, said today that pharmaceutical giant Novartis had exercised an option to purchase approximately $5.4 million worth of Alnylam’s unregistered shares (i.e. restricted shares that were never offered for sale on the public market). The purchase boosts Novartis’s ownership stake in Alnylam slightly, from 13 percent to 13.4 percent.

AmberWave Buys Aonex for $7.95M

AmberWave Systems, a semiconductor technology company based in Salem, NH, is acquiring Aonex Technologies, a subsidiary of Pasadena, CA-based Arrowhead Research, for $7.95 million plus royalties. AmberWave has raised more than $90 million in funding since being founded in 1998.

05/07/08

Picture Grows by $3 Million at Frame Media

Frame Media, the Wellesley, MA-based provider of content for digital picture frames that we profiled last September, has raised an additional $3 million in what it’s calling a Series A-1 investment round. The round, led by Longworth Venture Partners and CommonAngels, brings the company’s total funding to $5.2 million. Digital frame owners can use Frame Media’s Web-based interface to select advertising-supported content channels such as news, sports, weather, and stock photos.

Boston Scientific Picks Up the Pace

Boston Scientific of Natick, MA, will start selling a new line of advanced pacemakers in the European Union. The company announced today that the devices have received the CE Mark of approval from European regulators. The pacemakers, which are intended for patients whose hearts beat too slowly, are not yet approved in the United States.

05/06/08

CHiL Semi Raises a Cool $16.68M

CHiL Semiconductor, a Tewksbury, MA-based company that develops power-management technologies for energy-efficient computer chips, has raised $16.68 million in Series C funding, according to Private Equity Hub. The round was led by Panorama Capital.

05/05/08

Certica Raises $3.3 Million

Certica Solutions, a Wakefield, MA-based software company that helps K-12 schools comply with the reporting requirements of government funding agencies, announced today that it has closed a $3.3 million funding round. Brook Venture Partners, also based in Wakefield, led the investment round.

Leostream Channels $3M Series A Funding

Waltham, MA-based desktop virtualization software company Leostream, which lets users sign on to personalized desktop environments remotely, has completed a $3 million Series A funding round led by Meakem Becker Venture Capital, according to PE Hub, which cites a regulatory filing.

05/02/08

Cornerstone Buys Critical Therapeutics

Lexington, MA-based Critical Therapeutics, which owns the rights to the asthma drug Zyflo and is developing other treatments for respiratory and inflammatory diseases, said today that it will be acquired by Cary, NC-based Cornerstone BioPharma. The stock-based transaction will leave Cornerstone stockholders with 70 percent ownership of the combined company and Critical Therapeutics shareholders with 30 percent. Critical Therapeutics was founded in 2000 by University of Pittsburgh critical care physican Mitchell Fink, who later went on to found Lexington’s Logical Therapeutics; Critical went public in 2004, but has seen its stock price slide recently, leading it to promise investors late last year that it would seek a merger, according to Mass High Tech.

Medicare Will Cover Abiomed Heart

Abiomed of Danvers, MA, said today that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has decided to reimburse hospitals that give patients Abiomed’s AbioCor artificial heart, reversing a 22-year-old policy against Medicare coverage for heart replacement surgery. The self-contained, fully-implantable AbioCor unit, which has no infection-prone tubes or wires that pierce the skin, is designed to extend the lives of patients dying from heart failure, and was approved for the second time by the Food and Drug Administration in January.

Moldflow Bought for $297M

Framingham, MA-based Moldflow (NASDAQ:MFLO), a maker of software to aid in the design and manufacturing of plastic components, will be acquired by California’s Autodesk for $22 a share, or approximately $297 million, Autodesk announced yesterday.

04/30/08

“Celebrity Services” Startup Gets $2.5M Credit Line

Paid, Inc., a Boston startup that provides services such as online community building, Web design, merchandising, and VIP fan ticketing to musical and sports celebrities including Patti Labele, Keith Lockhart, Doug Flutie, and the group Aerosmith, said yesterday that it has closed a $2.5 million revolving line of credit with Lewis Asset Management of New York. The company said the money will enable it to win contracts with musical artists who require advance payments for VIP ticket packages.

Cortera Collects $8 Million

Cortera, a Quincy, MA-based company that helps other companies research prospective customers and score their creditworthiness, said yesterday that it has raised $8 million in new funding from CIBC Capital Partners, with additional participation by Battery Ventures and majority stockholder Fidelity Ventures. The latter firm acquired the company (formerly known as eCredit) in 2006.

3Com’s New CEO Based in China

Robert Mao, named yesterday by Marlborough, MA-based 3Com as the replacement for outgoing CEO Edgar Masri, will be based in China, where he’ll be able to oversee Internet switch and router maker H3C, 3Com said in a press release. Currently 3Com’s only profitable division, H3C started out as a joint venture between 3Com and Chinese networking vendor Huawei Technologies in 2003 and is now wholly owned by 3Com. The company has also hired Ronald Sege as its new president and chief operating officer; Sege will be based in the United States and will oversee 3Com’s operations outside China.

04/29/08

Cox Buys Adify, Venrock Cashes Out

Adify, a “vertical” Web advertising network based in San Bruno, CA, said in its blog today that it’s accepting a $300 million cash takeover offer from Atlanta-based media conglomerate Cox Enterprises. That’s good news, presumably, for Venrock. The venture firm, which has offices in Cambridge, MA, Menlo Park, CA, New York, and Israel, participated in two rounds of funding for Adify, an $8.25 million Series A round in 2006 and a $19 million Series B round in 2007. Joh Dyer, Cox’s executive vice president for finance, told the Associated Press that the Adify purchase will enhance online revenues for Cox, which owns a national chain of newspapers, radio and TV stations, and cable systems.

Summit Closes Two New Funds

Summit Partners, a private equity and venture capital firm with offices in Boston, London, and Palo Alto, said yesterday that it has closed two new investment funds, a €1 billion European private equity fund and an $825 million subordinated debt fund. (We looked it up, and “subordinated debt” is debt that’s paid off after most of a company’s other liabilities in the event of bankruptcy. In other words, it carries greater risk, and can therefore be leveraged for greater amounts of equity in target companies.) Summit, which now has investable assets of nearly $6 billion, says it will use the funds “to acquire minority and majority positions in successful, growing companies across many industries, including technology, business and financial services, consumer and industrial products, energy, healthcare and life sciences, Internet and information services, as well as media and entertainment.”

04/24/08

Ambient Charged Up by $3 Million

Ambient of Newton, MA, develops technology that makes it possible to use the existing electric power grid as a lightning-fast broadband network. The company today announced that it has secured $3 million in new financing from Vicis Capital Master Fund. One application of Ambient’s technology is automated reading of electricity meters and similar equipment by utilities, but it can also be used to deliver broadband Internet access to consumers.

04/23/08

Veveo’s vTap Comes to Sony Ericsson Phones

Andover, MA-based Veveo (which we profiled last August and again in April) said today that it has launched a version of its vTap mobile video search service optimized for Java-capable Sony Ericsson mobile phones. Using the software, available through the “Fun & Downloads” section of Sony Ericsson’s web portal, phone owners can search, view, and bookmark 150 million Web videos.

04/22/08

Cambria Pharmaceuticals Reaps $5.4M Financing

Cambria Pharmaceuticals of Woburn, MA, has received $5.4 in a Series A round joined by Biogen Idec New Ventures, CommonAngels, and several individual investors, the company announced today. Cambria aims to find new treatments for neurological disorders, especially ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Everquest Designer Joins 38 Studios

A few weeks ago we profiled a call-center-software startup whose name, Exony, stands for ex-Sony, in reference to the herd of employees who left Sony to start the company. Boston’s video game industry is building up an ex-Sony club of its own—Curt Schilling’s Maynard, MA-based 38 Studios. The company announced today that it has hired Travis McGeathy, former lead designer of Sony Online Entertainment’s Everquest franchise, as systems design lead for its own massively multiplayer online game, code-named Copernicus. 38 Studios design director Jason Roberts and director of community development Steve Danuser also hail from Sony Online Entertainment.