Follow TechBlips on Twitter
The Chip to Solar March Continues, Intermolecular Enters Solar Fray
Earth2Tech —
... Calif.-based Intermolecular grew its revenues more than 200 percent last year, this year the company forecasts growth more modestly, at about 35 percent, excluding its new solar business. Lazovsky wouldn’t disclose Intermolecular’s revenues, but he said the company, which employs 114 people, expects to turn a profit this year.
Part of the company’s solar moves will be fueled by recently-raised funding. In January, Intermolecular raised $20 million from CMEA Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Symyx Technologies and US Venture ...
Shell buys bigger stake in biofuel enzyme co. Codexis
VentureBeat —
... the company says.
Shell has been placing its bets all over the biofuel map for a while now, funding companies looking into a wide range of feedstocks, including algae. Since 2005, it has partnered with German biofuel company Choren, which is working on building plants to convert wood residue called BTL into high-efficiency fuels.
Codexis previously raised $133 million over four rounds from Shell, Bio*One Capital, CMEA Capital, Pequot Capital, Chevron Technology Ventures and Maxygen. ...
Pixazza crowdsources shopping info, turning pics into ads
VentureBeat —
... products from Overstock, Zappos, and Hot Topic. Although these aren’t the worst options, two-thirds of them aren’t sites that I’d normally bother with (price-wise) during an ecommerce shopping spree. This doesn’t necessarily damn Pixazza’s new tool, but it does reveal how its success may lie in the strength of its partnerships.
Pixazza is also announcing a $5.75 million first round of funding from August Capital, CMEA Capital, and Google.
...
Schooner joins the flash memory battle
VentureBeat —
... the Schooner Appliance for Memcached (for the memory system to speed up data retrieval). Both products are currently in trial mode, with a general release scheduled for the third quarter of 2009.
Schooner’s launch followed funding announcements for two other flash memory companies: $47.5 million for Fusion-io and $15 million for Pliant Technology. In Schooner’s case, however, the round actually closed back in October 2007. CMEA Capital and Redpoint Ventures participated equally in the financing. ...
VC Cash Is April Showers on Web Startup Flowers
ReadWriteWeb —
... IMshopping
Jodange
LookStat
Media6°
Psydex
Reflex Systems
Schooner Information Technology
Socialcast
TalentSpring
Tripbase
Which VCs Wired Money?
ABS Ventures
Amazon
Benchmark Capital
Big Red Ventures
BV Capital
CMEA Capital
Contour Venture Partners
Founders Co-op
Harbor ...
Cleantech due for a comeback? Khosla Ventures raises $1.1B, hires former Facebook CFO
VentureBeat —
... when cleantech funding has fallen dramatically. But his his comments to The Times, Khosla downplays the risk.
“Clean-tech companies taking large amounts of money — that’s project finance, not technical risk,” he says.
Khosla also has announced two new general partners: former Facebook Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu (whose move to the firm had previously been reported but unconfirmed) and James Kim of CMEA Ventures.
I’ve emailed Khosla Ventures for confirmation and comment. ...
Gov’t shines on Solyndra with $535 loan guarantee
VentureBeat —
... stimulus package, which carries the express goal of creating a green-collar workforce. The DOE plans to distribute as much as $83 billion in loan guarantees to alternative energy projects in the next several years.
Solyndra has previously done quite well for itself, pulling in five rounds of funding since its inception in 2005. It most recently raised $220 million in January from Argonaut Ventures, U.S. Venture Partners, CMEA Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and RockPort Capital Partners.
The ceremony ...
Jobvite takes $8.2M to expand recruiting on social networks
VentureBeat —
... don’t do), and tracking candidates’ progress through the recruiting system. For these features, clients pay a one-time activation fee and a monthly subscription charge that varies depending on their size and the level of services required. It includes TiVo, Mozilla and 23andMe among its clients — a pretty impressive roster.
The recent round of funding was provided by new investor ATA Ventures and past backer CMEA Capital. Jobvite has now raised about $15.4 million to date.
...
Cleantech investing officially bounces back from recession
VentureBeat —
Venture Capital investment in green technology companies has jumped to tie pre-recessionary levels, according to a new report out of Greentech Media. With $1.9 billion spread over 112 deals, this year’s third quarter trounced figures from earlier this year, signaling a stronger than anticipated comeback for the sector, which took a beating during the economic downturn last fall.
To put the recent numbers in context: the second quarter this year saw $1.2 billion distributed across 85 deals, which beat out the first quarters miserable $836 million and 59 deals. This trend of rapid ...
CMEA pulls plug on $500M late-stage cleantech fund
VentureBeat —
... CMEA Capital has decided against raising a new $500 million fund to back late and growth-stage cleantech companies, Dow Jones VentureWire reported earlier today. The news is interesting for two reasons: 1) It suggests a shift in strategy for CMEA, one of the largest investors in the green space, ...
Boston-Bred Geothermal Innovator, Foro Energy, Wins Biggest ARPA-E Energy Grant
Xconomy —
... the only grant awarded to a geothermal energy company under the ARPA-E program, which stands for Advanced Research Projects-Energy. Foro was in deep stealth mode prior to the Energy Department’s announcement—not a word about the company’s drilling technology has leaked into the media. But Xconomy has learned that Foro was incubated in Cambridge, MA, and has raised roughly $12.5 million in venture funding from Waltham, MA-based North Bridge Venture Partners and CMEA Capital of San Francisco. The company’s president is Joel Moxley, a former ...
Mysterious search engine Blekko finds $2.5M
VentureBeat —
Blekko, a stealthy San Francisco company that is sounding more and more like a search engine, has tacked $2.5 million onto its third round of funding, which now totals $14 million, according to Dow Jones VentureWire. The recent extension came from US Venture Partners and CMEA Capital, but it was previously backed by SoftTech Venture Capital, Western Technology Investment, Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, famed angel investor Ron Conway, and former Googlers Jeremy Wenokur and Danid desJardins.
The company has not released a launch date yet, and it’s website ...
Google-backed Pixazza opens up photo tagging service to help blogs earn revenue
VentureBeat —
... a few hundred inquiries about work a week. They test the prospective taggers out over time, and then give the effective ones more permissions to link content.
“Computers tend not to be good involving judgment and tastes,” Everingham said. “We’ve built a user interface that lets our taggers search through our inventory and narrow it down very quickly.”
Pixazza raised $5.75 million in a first round of funding from August Capital, CMEA Capital, and Google.
...
