04/29/08

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.

04/21/08

IBM Does Due Diligent

IBM is at it again, acquiring another local software company. Privately held Diligent Technologies, a Framingham, MA-based maker of de-duplication software that reduces data storage costs for large enterprises, announced Friday that it’s becoming part of IBM System Storage division of the IBM Systems and Technology Group. The purchase price was not revealed.

04/18/08

VisEn Medical Sees $5M in Expanded Series B Round

Woburn, MA-based VisEn Medical, which develops fluorescence technology for non-invasive in vivo imaging, today announced it has raised $5 million in an expanded Series B financing round led by Merck Capital Ventures and Flagship Ventures. The initial Series B round, closed last November, took in $7 million.

04/17/08

Dynogen, Apex Call Off Reverse Merger

Waltham, MA-based Dynogen and Apex Bioventures Acquisition (AMEX: PEX) have agreed to call off the $98 million reverse merger they originally announced in February. Citing market conditions, the firms said the terminating the merger agreement was in the best interests of both companies. Dynogen will seek alternative means of financing its programs, which include clinical-stage work on drugs for irritable bowel syndrome and nocturnal gastroesophageal reflux disease.

04/16/08

Kalido Expands to Bangalore

Kalido, the Burlington, MA-based data warehouse customization company we profiled in March, said yesterday that it’s opening a product development and servies office in Bangalore, India. The office will complement rather than replace Kalido’s existing operations in Massachusetts and London, the company says. “We’ve doubled our product portfolio in the last year and demand for our ‘Information Engine’ has grown significantly,” said Kalido president and CEO Bill Hewitt. “This new Center will serve as a regional hub for Asia as well as contribute to our development efforts worldwide.”

BSX Snares CryoCor for $17.6 Million

Boston Scientific will acquire San Diego-based CryoCor, with which it has an existing agreement to develop treatments for cardiac arrhythmia, for approximately $17.6 million, the company announced today. Under the cash deal, Natick, MA-based Boston Scientific (NYSE: BSX) will pay $1.35 per share for CryoCor (NASDAQ: CRYO), which represents a roughly 20 percent premium over yesterday’s closing price of $1.13.

04/15/08

Aileron Raises $10 Million

Cambridge-based biopharmaceutical company Aileron Therapeutics, which is developing peptide drugs for the treatment of cancer and other diseases, has raised $10 million in a private placement of preferred stock, the company announced today. Apple Tree Partners and the Novartis Venture Fund led the round.

ArQule Gets a New CEO

Woburn, MA-based ArQule, which is developing several compounds known as kinase inhibitors as potential cancer therapies, said today that Paolo Pucci, a Bayer senior vice president overseeing Bayer-Schering’s global oncology and  therapeutics business, will take over as the company’s new CEO. Pucci succeeds Stephen Hill, a nine-year veteran of the company who announced his approaching departure in January and left ArQule to become president and CEO of Brussels, Belgium-based Solvay Pharmaceuticals on April 1.

QD Vision Collects $9M in Third Round

PE Week Wire is reporting, based on a regulatory filing, that Watertown, MA-based QD Vision, which is building brighter, more efficient displays based on “quantum dot” technology, has collected $9 million of a $16 million Series C funding round. Existing backers Highland Capital Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners are leading the investment. As we reported last week, QD Vision also procured an investment recently from In-Q-Tel, the venture investing wing of the U.S. intelligence community.

04/11/08

Diomed to Sell Assets to AngioDynamics for $11M

Following on last month’s announcement that it had filed for bankruptcy and planned to sell off its assets, minimally invasive medicine firm Diomed (AMEX: DIO) of Andover, MA, now says it’s inked an $11 million deal to sell its U.S. operations and some of its U.K assets to AngioDynamics of Queensbury, NY. The agreement, which excludes a $7 million patent-suit settlement that Diomed won from AngioDynamics and an anticipated $3.6 million settlement with Vascular Solutions, represents a better offer that the one Diomed said last month it had received from the German firm Biolitec, according to a report in Mass High Tech.

04/10/08

TouchStone Software Sold for $18 Million

Phoenix Technologies of Milpitas, CA, said today that it will acquire TouchStone Software, the North Andover, MA-based maker of tools for diagnosing and updating Windows personal computers.  Touchstone stockholders will get $1.48 for each share, making the total value of the deal roughly $18 million. TouchStone’s core product is a yearly service that gives customers access to the company’s database of software drivers for PC peripherals. Phoenix develops PC firmware such as the “BIOS” that loads the operating systems software into your computer when you start it.

LocaModa, TouchTunes Partner on Digital Jukeboxes

LocaModa, the Cambridge, MA-based maker of software that allows mobile phone owners to interact with commercial displays from their cell phones, said today that it has formed a partnership with TouchTunes, the nation’s largest operator of digital jukeboxes in bars, restaurants, and retail locations. The two companies will make it possible for customers to use their mobile phones to call up information such as song names on flat-screen displays driven by TouchTune’s media server.

Inotek Consolidates, Bids CEO Adieu

Drug developer Inotek is closing several international offices and selling its Israeli manufacturing plant in an effort to focus its resources on four of its main clinical and preclinical programs, the Beverly, MA-based firm announced today. The company also announced a host of changes to its management, including the resignation of CEO Andrew Salzman, and the termination of a collaboration with Genentech.

$500K MacArthur Award for Public Radio Exchange

The MacArthur Foundation in Chicago announced yesterday that that the Public Radio Exchange (PRX), a Cambridge, MA-based nonprofit that  maintains an online library of independently-produced radio documentaries from which public radio station managers can select programs for broadcast, is one of eight organizations selected for its 2008 MacArthur Awards for Creative and Effective Institutions. The award comes with a $500,000 prize. PRX says it will use the money to migrate its Java-based Web service to the Ruby on Rails language, provide more seed funding for content creators, and add to its capital reserves.

04/09/08

Nuance Writes Itself an eScription

Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: NUAN), the Burlington, MA-based provider of speech-related software technologies and services, including the Dictaphone system used by hundreds of thousands of doctors to dictate clinical notes over the phone, said yesterday that it will purchase Needham, MA-based eScription. The company makes automated speech-to-text software that turns dictated medical notes into rough first drafts, which are then polished by professional medical transcriptionists. Nuance said it will pay $363 million for eScription—$340 million in cash and $23 million in Nuance common stock.

04/08/08

Iomega Accepts $213M EMC Purchase Offer

It’s official. Just weeks after EMC sweetened its previously spurned purchase offer, San Diego-based storage maker Iomega has formally accepted a takeover bid from the Hopkington, MA-based data management and infrastructure company, the two firms announced today. The final price of approximately $213 million, or $3.85 per share, is slightly higher than the sweetened $205.5 million bid reported on March 17. Iomega had previously rejected a $180 million offer.