08/26/11

Redstone-Founded Advancit Gets $3.2M

Norwood, MA-based Advancit Capital, an early stage investment firm founded by Shari Redstone (daughter of CBS and Viacom director and National Amusements president Sumner Redstone), has inked a $3.2 million investment, an SEC filing shows. The firm, co-founded by Jason Ostheimer, will invest in media, entertainment, and tech startups, according to an e-mail sent to the Wall Street Journal‘s All Things Digital blog.

08/24/11

Complete to Sequence 1,000 Kids’ Genomes

Complete Genomics (NASDAQ: GNOM), the Mountain View, CA-based company that sequences entire human genomes as a service for researchers, said today it will determine the sequences of 1,000 genomes as part of the second phase of an ongoing pediatric cancer study sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. Scientists at SAIC-Frederick will compare samples of tumors, and normal tissues, from 500 kids with cancer, Complete Genomics said in a statement. This phase of the contract is worth $8 million to Complete Genomics, and is being paid for out of money from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009, also known as the federal “stimulus” law.

CityPockets Acquires DealBurner

Consolidation comes to the daily deals arena. New York startup CityPockets said in a blog post Wednesday it acquired instant deals service DealBurner. No financial terms were disclosed. One-year-old CityPockets is a secondary marketplace for reselling daily deals. DealBurner, founded in July, is a text message–based service that aggregates instant deals from such sources as Groupon Now and LivingSocial Instant. Jason Fertel, DealBurner’s founder, joins CityPockets as its chief product officer. CityPockets’s investors include Great Oaks Venture Capital, MI Ventures, and LaunchBox Digital.

Brightcove Seeks $50M IPO

Brightcove, a Cambridge, MA-based digital media and video hosting firm that’s planning a move to Boston, revealed in an SEC filing today that it’s aiming to bring in about $50 million in an initial public offering. The company said that Morgan Stanley and Stifel, Nicolaus & Company will serve as joint book-running managers for the deal. Brightcove raised $12 million in Series D funding in April 2010. It reported a net loss of $9.7 million on revenue of $28.4 million for the first six months of 2011.

GlobalOne Lands $25M, Gets New CEO

Software-as-a-service provider GlobalOne in New York said in a press release Wednesday it secured an initial funding commitment of more than $25 million from Columbia Capital. Four-year-old GlobalOne plans to use the funds to expand its services and market coverage. GlobalOne also appointed David Northington as its CEO. He previously served as chief operating officer of IT consulting services company Capgemini in North America.

MakerBot Pulls in $10M

MakerBot Industries, a New York-based 3D printing company, raised $10 million, according to the company’s blog. The funding round was led by Foundry Group, with participation from Bezos Expeditions, True Ventures, RRE and a group of angel investors. MakerBot sells a 3D printer called the Thing-O-Matic, along with kits and other accessories designed to make 3D printing accessible to the masses.

08/23/11

Foundation Medicine Grabs $10M

Foundation Medicine, a Cambridge, MA-based cancer diagnostics startup, has raised $10 million of a targeted $20.5 million round of equity funding, from one investor, and SEC filing reveals. Last year Foundation announced it had raised the first part of a $25 million Series A financing led by Third Rock Ventures. Earlier this year the startup added former Clarient president Michael Pellini as its new CEO and announced deals with Celgene and Novartis.

EcoSynthetix Raises $100M in TSX IPO

On August 4, Lansing, MI- and Burlington, ON-based renewable chemical company EcoSynthetix announced it had closed its initial public offering priced at $9 per share in Canadian dollars, for proceeds totaling $100.35 million. The common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol “ECO.”

EcoSynthetix is the inaugural portfolio company of the InvestMichigan! Growth Capital Fund, part of the 2008 economic initiative created by then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm. Growth capital investments are made across a broad range of sectors in companies that have enterprise values of less than $200 million and are located in Michigan, have their corporate headquarters in Michigan, have a significant number of employees based in Michigan, or are in the process of planning an expansion and/or relocation to Michigan. The fund is managed by Beringea and Credit Suisse’s Customized Fund Investment Group.

Vivus Adds $45.8M

Vivus (NASDAQ: VVUS), the Mountain View, CA-based developer of drugs for obesity and erectile dysfunction, said today it has raised $45.8 million in a stock offering. The company agreed to sell about 6.9 million shares of stock at $6.65 apiece. Funds managed by QVT Financial were the lead investors in the deal, while two other existing investors participated, Vivus said. The stock offering was priced at about a 6.5 percent discount to yesterday’s closing stock price of $7.10.

Quanterix Finds $6M

Cambridge, MA-based diagnostics startup Quanterix has inked a $6 million equity investment from nine investors, an SEC filing shows. Members of Bain Capital Ventures, Arch Venture Partners, and Flagship Ventures are listed as Quanterix directors on the filing. Earlier this year Novartis struck a deal to use Quanterix’s technology for diagnosing a neurological disorder.

08/22/11

Motricity CEO Wuerch Out

Ryan Wuerch is out as CEO of Motricity (NASDAQ: MOTR) and is no longer on the board, the company announced today. Motricity said Wuerch’s termination was “mutually agreed,” but it gave no reason for the change. President and chief operating officer Jim Smith was named interim CEO, and is being considered for the permanent position while the company conducts a broader search. Motricity, a mobile software service company, moved to the Seattle area in late 2007 when it acquired the mobile division of Infospace for $135 million. The company completed a disappointing IPO in 2009. Shares were down more than 7 percent on news of the CEO change.

Sentilla Collects $15M

Redwood City, CA-based Sentilla, which makes data center analysis and planning software, said today that it has collected $15 million in Series C funding. New investor SingTel Innov8 Ventures led the round, which was joined by existing backers ONSET Ventures and Claremont Creek Ventures. The company said it will use the funds to expand sales and marketing efforts.

$3M for iScience Interventional

iScience Interventional, a Menlo Park, CA-based maker of microcatheter technology that helps surgeons reduce intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients, reported last week in a regulatory filing that it has raised $3 million in new equity-based financing. The company was founded in 1999 and has a long list of backers including Affinity Capital Management, Asset Management Company, Clarian Health Ventures, De Novo Ventures, Johnson & Johnson Development, L Capital Partners, Pacific Horizon Ventures, Prism VentureWorks, and Three Arch Partners.

Skype Snaps Up GroupMe

Communications service Skype in Luxembourg said in press release Sunday it entered into an agreement to acquire New York’s GroupMe. Terms of the deal were not disclosed by the companies but a post at AllThingsD pegs the price at about $85 million. One-year-old GroupMe‘s app lets users send messages and start conference calls with groups formed from their smartphone contacts. GroupMe’s investors include Betaworks, First Round Capital, Founder Collective, General Catalyst Partners, Khosla Ventures, Lerer Ventures, and SV Angel. According to Venture Deal, GroupMe raised $10.6 million in January and $850,000 last August. Skype is in the midst of being acquired for $8.5 billion by Microsoft according to a press statement issued in May.

TwinStrata Snags $5.7M

TwinStrata, a Natick, MA-based provider of cloud data storage for businesses, has pinned down $5.7 million of an equity offering that could hit $8.7 million, an SEC filing shows. The funding came from 27 investors, according to the document, which lists Braden Bohrmann and Rich Levandov of Avalon Ventures as TwinStrata directors. Levandov will be participating in an Xconomy chat this September on cloud and consumer trends in Internet startups and innovation.

Dendreon Adds Ex-ImClone CEO to Board

Seattle-based Dendreon (NASDAQ: DNDN) said today it has named John H. Johnson, the CEO of East Brunswick, NJ-based Savient Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SVNT). Johnson was previously the head of Eli Lilly’s oncology business unit, and the CEO of ImClone Systems, the cancer drug developer, when it was acquired by Lilly for more than $6.5 billion in 2008.

08/20/11

Digital Chocolate Eats Up Sandlot Games

San Mateo-based social game maker Digital Chocolate said this week that it has acquired Bothell, WA-based Sandlot Games, a casual game studio known for Web and mobile titles such as Cake Mania, Super Granny, Tradewinds, and Westward. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed. “Sandlot has built a great reputation in casual games,” Digital Chocolate founder and CEO Trip Hawkins (an Xconomist), who also founded Electronic Arts, said in a statement. “We love their development teams and we can now expand further in Seattle.”

Box.net Collects $19M in Fourth Round

Palo Alto, CA-based cloud document sharing company Box.net has upped the size of its ongoing Series D funding round to $35 million and has collected $19 million of that amount so far, according to a regulatory filing disclosed this week. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and Draper Fisher Jurvetson are participating in the D round, along with some new investors who will be identified soon, Box.net CEO Aaron Levie told VentureBeat this week. Box has been sucking up cash fast this year: in February it closed a $48 million funding round.

RelayRides Boosts Series A Round

RelayRides, the San Francisco-based car sharing network, said this week that it has increased its Series A2 funding round to $10 million with help from existing investors Google Ventures and August Capital and new investor Shasta Ventures. Author and entrepreneur Lisa Gansky also contributed to the round. RelayRides raised $5.1 million in Series A2 funding in March and an additional $673,000 in in May.

$650K Round, New App at drchrono

A Mountain View, CA-based electronic health records startup called drchrono announced this week that it has collected $650,000 in new funding from Russian investor Yuri Milner, the founder of DST Global, and General Catalyst. Drchrono makes an iPad-based app that helps physicians’ practices handle medical records, electronic prescribing, medical billing, and patient management. Drchrono also announced the release of a patient check-in app called OnPatient; it allows patients to update their medical data via iPad while in the waiting room.