Quickband Networks

Aug 1, 2018

VC Buzz New in the News Electron Economy Secures $70 Million in Second Round of Funding CUPERTINO, Calif.-- Electron Economy secured $70 million in its Series B Preferred round of funding led by SOFTBANK Capital Partners and including SOFTBANK Venture Capital, Chase Capital Partners, Flatiron Partners and Crosspoint Venture Partners. The round follows the January introduction of Electron Economy's Internet TONE, its Internet Transaction Operations Network, and its first service, E-Commerce Operations Management, which together form an open and extensible solution for managing e-business operations. In other news, Electron Economy named Ed Carroll as CFO and executive vice president and Stephen Huggins as vice president of client operations. NEW YORK-- Alloy Online (Nasdaq: ALOY ), an Internet destination for the 56 million teens in Generation Y, entered into a financial and strategic partnership with Liberty Digital (Nasdaq: LDIG ) in a transaction is valued at approximately $54 million. Liberty Digital will receive approximately 2.9 million shares of newly issued Alloy Online common stock for $19 per share. In exchange, Alloy will receive $10 million in cash and 837,740 shares of Liberty Digital common stock. The two companies will work together to target Alloy's teen demographic through Liberty Digital's interactive TV-based commerce initiative. Lee Masters, president and CEO of Liberty Digital will join Alloy's board of directors. TollBridge Technologies Raises $45 Million in Mezzanine Round of Financing SANTA CLARA, Calif.-- TollBridge Technologies, a developer of high-quality voice-over-broadband solutions for a new generation of carriers, secured an additional $45 million in mezzanine financing, bringing its total amount of capital raised to date to $70 million. Meritech Capital Partners led the round of funding and was joined by TeleSoft Partners, along with new corporate partner LSI Logic, as well as investors from earlier rounds, Communications Ventures Partners, Matrix Partners, WorldView Technology Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures. TollBridge solutions allows carriers that own Class 5 switches to use broadband access technologies, such as DSL or cable, to bypass the Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier and deliver toll-quality voice and integrated data services. WellMed Closes Strategic Funding of $30 Million PORTLAND, Ore. -- WellMed, a provider of online consumer health management tools, closed its latest private financing of $30 million from ABN AMRO Private Equity, CareInsite, Intel, McKesson HBOC and Tenet Healthcare Corp. Current investors, Acacia Venture Partners and Prism Venture Partners, also participated in this round. The latest funding increases total private funding for WellMed to more than $37.5 million since its inception. WellMed's Personal Health Manager collects and analyzes health information to determine an individual's unique health profile, filters and delivers tailored health information and recommendations according to that profile, provides interactive, self-paced, self-care modules enabling individuals to monitor and manage specific disease or lifestyle risk factors, and provides a centralized location to store and maintain personal health records. CB Technologies Closes on $27.5 Million in Equity Financing WEST CHESTER, Pa. -- CB Technologies closed on $27.5 million of equity financing provided by a syndicate organized by MedEquity Investors. The lead investor in the syndicate is Chase Capital Partners; the second largest investor is GE Capital's Healthcare Finance Group. Other syndicate members include The Kaufmann Fund, BancBoston Ventures and Brinson Venture Management. Robert W. Daly, managing director of MedEquity and W. Brett Ingersoll, principal of Chase Capital Partners, joined CB's board of directors. CB Technologies provides electronic data capture, e-business consulting, and integration services to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. HERNDON, Va. -- Nx Networks (Nasdaq: NTRX ) raised $25 million in additional capital. The company said that approximately $8 million of the proceeds would be used to complete the acquisition of St. Paul Minnesota based AetherWorks. AetherWorks is a privately held provider of innovative voice and data, carrier class convergence solutions, including SoftSwitch technology for the telecommunications industry. Nx Networks is a worldwide provider of secure Internet telephony and data networking products. Dovebid Secures Additional $24 in Series C Funding Foster City, CA DoveBid, an online and Webcast B2B auctioneer and capital asset sale advisor, announced that Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO ), Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW ), Comdisco and Datastream Systems (Nasdaq: DSTM ) invested a combined $24 million into the companys Series C round of financing. This new investment brings the Series C total to $109.5 million. BioNetrix Lands $15 Million in Second Round Venture Funding VIENNA, Va. -- BioNetrix Systems Corp., a provider of direct personal authentication, closed $15 million in a second round of venture capital financing led by Carlyle Venture Partners. Columbia Capital and existing investors Steve Walker and The Dinner Club also participated in this funding round. BioNetrix provides a software infrastructure that allows large corporate and government customers to conclusively verify users accessing their critical business information, applications and processes via corporate networks or the Internet. BioNetrix added Arun Gupta, vice president for Carlyle Venture Partners, and J. Mitchell Reese, managing director at Carlyle to its board of directors. ViaFone Raises More Than $10 Million in First Round Financing SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.-- ViaFone, an application service provider for mobile commerceraised first round financing of $10.7 million. The round was co-led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Partech International, with additional investments from Angel Investors, Draper Richards, and several angel investors. ViaFone allows online merchants to seamlessly 'mobilize' their existing e-commerce infrastructure, enabling consumers to purchase anything via the Internet anytime, anywhere from any wireless device, including cellular telephones, 'smart' digital phones and connected PDAs. Raj Atluru, partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Vincent Worms, founding partner of Partech International, join the board of directors of ViaFone. Supportkids Raises $9 Million AUSTIN, Texas -- Supportkids, a private company that helps families collect past-due child support, completed its second round of venture capital investment. J. H. Whitney & Co. led the $9 million round, which included participation by Austin Ventures and Private Equity Partners of Fort Worth. This round brings the total venture capital raised by the company to $14.5 million. Austin Ventures provided the financing in the first round, which closed in November 1997. Now in its 10th year of operation, the company is a pioneer in the field of private child support enforcement, offering parents an effective option for resolving child support issues. Open Software Associates Secures Over $4.3 Million in Venture Funding NASHUA, N.H.-- Open Software Associates secured more than A$7 million (US $4.3 million) in new equity from Technology Venture Partners, one of Australia's venture capital firms, which will also take a board seat in the company. OSA is a multinational corporation based in Melbourne, Australia that specializes in global software management for large enterprises. The funding will be used for product development and to substantially expand the company's sales, marketing and support capabilities at its U.S. headquarters in Nashua, NH, and in San Jose, Calif. The company's Netdeploy Global suite of products allows large enterprises to provide single-point management of all desktop software worldwide, even for mobile workers on fragile, low-bandwidth connections and for business-to-business partnerships. AdSavers.com Lands $3.5 Million Investment WASHINGTON-- Internet startup AdSavers.com received funding for its pay-for-view, full-screen, Internet marketing channel. Draper Atlantic led the $3.5 million round that included San Venture Strategy Partners. Draper Atlantic's Dan Rua and Venture Strategy's David Likins will join the AdSavers.com board of directors. AdSavers are animated screensaver ads that activate on a PC screen in idle mode. Interactive features allow viewers to launch an advertiser's website, save favorite AdSavers, or email AdSavers. AdSavers install like screensavers, with advertisements rotating at a viewer selected pace, and allow web surfers to choose product categories of interest. Request4bid.com Secures Initial Financing BELLEVUE, Wash.-- Request4bid.com, a new online trading system for IT hardware procurement, secured $1 million of initial funding through angel investors. The site is expected to launch later this month. Joining Request4bid.com are Meredith King, director of marketing and products, who held product and marketing positions at Computech Systems; Brian Pavicic, director of sales and customer service, who previously served as sales and marketing director for Chili!Soft and vice president of sales at InfoAccess; and Marc Swenson, director of information technology, who most recently served as western regional director of information technology at Luminant Worldwide, formerly Free Range Media. HONG KONG -- chinadotcom corp. (Nasdaq: CHINA ), a pan-Asian integrated Internet company, agreed to acquire a minority stake in the NRG Group, a Canadian Internet incubator which is focused on young entrepreneurs and their business ideas. NRG is an operating Internet incubation, venture capital and advisory company. In other news, chinadotcom's subsidiary, hongkong.com Corp., acquired a 30% stake in infoisLive.com Limited, a wireless application services provider in Hong Kong. The partnership allows hongkong.com to offer portal-enabled interactive mobile WAP services to all mobile users in Hong Kong. infoisLive.com is a spin-off from Future Information Technology Limited, formerly a Linux product developer and solution provider. NEW YORK-- Miller Freeman Inc., a United News & Media company (NASDAQ: UNEWY ), and Pegasus Capital Advisors, have formed paperloop.com, a new, equally-owned global company for the paper, printing and converting industries. Paperloop.com will finance, develop and deliver products and services across multiple mediums including the Internet, print, conferences and trade shows. It will create an online information and business exchange for buying, selling and conducting a comprehensive set of other industry-related transactions. Zaffire Adds Strategic Investors in Second Round of Funding SAN JOSE, Calif.-- Zaffire Inc., formerly known as New Access Communications, added Broadband Office and Williams Communications (NYSE: WCG ) as strategic investors. They join Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Juniper Networks (NASDAQ: JNPR ) in the company's second round of funding, bringing the total funding in the company to over $26 million. The company's first-round financing was funded by MRV Communications (NASDAQ: MRVC ). Zaffire is developing a next-generation, service-aware optical networking solution for metro and regional service providers. Telesis and Vectis to Merge MISSION VIEJO, Calif., and WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Telesis Medical Management and Vectis Corp. have agreed to a 50/50 merger of equals. The new entity, called Physician WebLink, will be an e-health services provider combining advanced connectivity and management solutions with a substantial physician customer base. Bartley S. Asner, MD, currently president of Vectis, will serve as co-chairman of the board and president, health services of Physician WebLink. William S. Bernstein, a founder and current chairman of Telesis, will serve as co-chairman of the board and president, corporate development of Physician WebLink. Joseph T. Lynaugh, currently CEO of Telesis, will become CEO of Physician WebLink. Alan Botsford, currently executive vice president, information technology, for Vectis, will become president of the new company's technology development subsidiary. NEW YORK -- On2.com Inc. (Amex: ONT ), a leader in broadband content delivery over the Internet, agreed to acquire QuickBand Networks, a Los Angeles-based aggregator and retail distributor of broadband entertainment content. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. As a result of this acquisition, On2 will expand its technical production capabilities to more quickly enable third-party developers and content providers to utilize On2's technology. QuickBand currently acquires short-subject independent films and music-related content, as well as footage of celebrity interviews, concerts and events, and repackages them for broadband distribution over the Internet and in DVD editions sold through national retailers. On2 plans to apply its full-motion, television-quality video streaming technology to all QuickBand content. CopperCom and DTI Networks Merge SANTA CLARA, Calif.-- CopperCom and DTI Networks announced a merger of the two companies. CopperCom delivers carrier-class Voice over DSL equipment, both voice gateways and integrated access devices, to incumbent and competitive local exchange carriers. Using DTI's Virtual Voice Services architecture, service providers can quickly create and deliver dynamic voice services over current and next generation networks. The merged company will be called CopperCom and will retain its headquarters in Santa Clara, with development and support facilities in both Santa Clara and Boca Raton. Cynthia Ringo, president and CEO of CopperCom, will head the company as CEO, and Dennis Chateauneuf, president and CEO of DTI Networks, will be president and COO. In May 1999, DTI raised $17 million in funding from Advent International, AT&T Ventures, Advanced Technology Ventures and ABN AMRO Private Equity. ALAMEDA, Calif. and CALGARY, Alberta-- Wind River Systems (Nasdaq: WIND ), a provider of software and services for smart devices, agreed to acquire Calgary, Alberta-based AudeSi Technologies, a privately held supplier of innovative embedded Java-based tools and other components for building flexible, multi-application consumer devices. AudeSi will help Wind River offer original equipment manufacturers of Internet appliances, digital consumer electronics, and business terminals additional technology to develop integrated Java-based products faster and with greater functionality. Wind River will acquire AudeSi for 1.075 million shares of Wind River stock (about $51 million). AudeSi is funded by a consortium of funds represented by Ventures West Management, Business Development Bank of Canada, and Puglisi Howells & Co. GET BUZZED! VC Buzz, that is. The latest buzz on the daily deals coming down in the femtosecond pace of the Venture Capital world VC Buzz brings you the latest on who's gotten their funding and from whom, what's happening at the VCs and who's just swallowed whom in the maniacally fast, deadly serious Darwinian scramble for Internet success and dominance. Don't get trampled by the herd ... stay ahead with VC Buzz, delivered every business day to your e-mail box. 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