Alastair Goldfisher
In the third quarter, venture-backed M&A activity remained soft, with 107 deals reported, compared to 125 for the same period a year ago. Likewise, the first three quarters of 2013 saw just 286 VC-backed deals with disclosed valuations, well off the 362 transactions for the same period in 2012.
Norwest Venture Partners among the firms to enjoy multiple exits recently
Stratoscale announced it has raised $10 million in Series A financing from Battery Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners. The Herzeliya, Israel-based company develops virtualization technology to improve the performance of large data centers. As part of the funding, Scott Tobin, general partner at Battery Ventures, and Adam Fisher, partner at BVP, have joined the board.
Data analysis provider Paxata has raised $8 million in Series B funding led by Accel Partners. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company, which had been operating in stealth for the past 18 months, has now raised $10 million in total funding. Paxata had previously raised a $2 million Series A round from Accel, whose partner, Dinesh Katiyar, sits on the company board.
Los Angeles-based BloomNation raised $1.65 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital, Chicago Ventures, CrunchFund and MuckerLab. BloomNation, which operates an online marketplace for florists nationwide, is a graduate of MuckerLab, a Los Angeles-based accelerator.
The storied firm, which just reorganized its early-stage team, ranked as the most active investor during the month
MapBox, which has offices in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., this morning announced it closed a $10 million Series A round from Foundry Group. MapBox has been largely bootstrapped until now, although it has received more than $649,000 in grants from the Knight Foundation, including $575,000 as a winner of the 2012 Knight News Challenge Data. Ryan McIntyre, managing director of Foundry, discussed his firm's investment in a blog post here. The company provides map making services to create customized, interactive maps for websites and apps using open-source tools and data. The funding will be used by MapBox to grow its staff beyond its current number of 35.
SundaySky, which provides video advertising services, has raised $20 million in a Series C investment round that was led by Comcast Ventures. Others in the round include Liberty Global Ventures, Vintage Investment Partners and existing investors Carmel Ventures, Globespan Capital Partners and Norwest Venture Partners. The company previously raised $17 million in funding, including a $9 million Series B round in 2010. As part of the recent round, Andrew Cleland, managing director of Comcast Ventures, has joined the board.
Fund size is unknown, but Silicon Valley firm is gearing up to soon start raising 10th fund
Nitro, a San Francisco-based provider of document productivity and workflow solutions, told peHUB that it has raised $6.5 million to date. Nitro, which announced product news earlier this week. raised a $3.5 million round announced in May 2012 and a previously unannounced $3 million round that the company secured in May. Australian-based Starfish Ventures was the sole investor in both rounds.