Dan Primack

Delivery Agent Inc., a San Francisco-based provider of shopping-enabled programming and content monetization for entertainment properties, has raised $24.85 million in Series D funding, according to a regulatory filing.  The company previously raised $35 million, from firms like Bessemer Venture Partners, Cardinal Venture Capital and Worldview Technology Partners. Coral Capital Management came aboard as a new investor […]

We've written a lot about the cleantech funding void, for VC-backed companies with some sort of manufacturing component (e-vehicles, biofuels, etc). Many of these startups were founded on the assumption of available credit, but fell into a capital hole when the banks began blowing up. This led to the creation of gap-filling “green growth” funds, from firms like Blackstone Group, C Change Capital, CMEA Capital and Kleiner Perkins. Actually, scratch CMEA Capital from that list. San Francisco-based CMEA has canceled plans to raise the $500 million-targeted fund, as first reported this morning by VentureWire. I spoke with CMEA managing general partner Jim Watson, who said that the decision was driven by the recognition that CMEA’s core competency is in early-stage transformative science rather than in later-stage growth financing.

Last Twitter funding note (I promise): Spoke on the phone last night with Jeff Horing of Insight Venture Partners, whose firm led the $100 million-ish round at the $1 billion valuation. Jeff didn’t lead the deal for Insight – that was Jerry Murdock – but clearly knows plenty about it (you don’t do this sort of deal without everyone being very fully briefed). A couple quotes:

In light of Twitter having raised over $135 million in VC funding so far this year (new round plus January round), I figured it was time for a Top 10 list of 2009 venture recipients. And, no, Twitter is not in the top spot. That honor goes to Clovis Oncology, which raised over $146 million in a Series A round four months ago. A few metrics notes: (1) The list only includes U.S.-based companies. It didn't appear that any non-U.S. companies qualified and, if they did, I didn't want to get bogged down in currency disputes; (2) The list aggregates all VC funding secured in 2009, rather than individual rounds; (3) The calculations do not include government funding (grants, etc); (4) The ability to secure lots of VC dollars does not necessarily correlate to a strong company or strong returns. So, without further ado, get the full list after the jump...

Twitter confirmed the obvious on Friday, with a short blog post about how it had raised a new round of VC funding. No dollar or valuation info, of course (Twitter is to financial info what Bill Belichick is to injuries), but a list of investors. They were: Insight Venture Partners, T. Rowe Price, Morgan Stanley, […]

Earlier this week I attended a meeting of the Village Ventures network, which is a group of small regionally-focused and/or sector-focused VC funds. Groups like Borealis Ventures, Greycroft Partners, Inflexion Partners, Point Judith, Highway 12 Ventures, Village Ventures itself and others. Much appreciation to them for having me. One thing I discussed with a bunch of attendees – mostly VCs, but also a few CEOs – was this issue of entrepreneurial animosity toward venture capitalists. Almost a sense of glee (schadenfreude?) that the “VC model is broken.” Most of this animosity has been made public via blogs, and perhaps it has been long-latent without such an easily-accessible bullhorn (just read through year’s old comments on TheFunded). But some of the folks I spoke with think that

Chatting with the Reuters folks about VC-backed A123 Systems, which went public earlier today and was up nearly 40% at last check (market cap approaching $2b): Get other peHUB videos here.

Twitter, the San Francisco-based micro-messaging service, today will close upwards of $100 million in new VC funding, as first reported by WSJ's Deal Journal blog. peHUB has since confirmed the news, with a source close to the situation. Insight Venture Partners and T. Rowe Price would be among the new investors, while return backers would include Spark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners. I'd assume that existing shareholders Benchmark Capital and Union Square Ventures also would participate, but

San Francisco-based secondary firm Industry Ventures today will announce its acquisition of Little Hawk Capital, a Washington, D.C.-based firm focused on direct and indirect investments in small VC and growth equity funds. Consider it a secondary secondary, which probably makes it a tertiary... Little Hawk founder Roland Reynolds will serve as a principal with Industry Ventures, while existing Industry staffer Ken Wallace was promoted to vice president and will work with Reynolds. Little Hawk raised $30 million for its debut fund in 2006, and still has room for a handful of new commitments. Reynolds says that the plan is to work through this vehicle -- now rebranded Industry Little Hawk -- before beginning a new fund-raise.

peHUB has learned that Microsoft has acquired Interactive Supercomputing, a VC-backed maker of the Star-P interactive parallel computing platform. An official announcement is expected tomorrow. No word yet on price. Interactive Supercomputing's website is currently down for maintenance (perhaps being reskinned?), but a recent press release describes Star-P as "technical computing software that enables users to code computing problems on their desktops using familiar mathematical software such as MATLAB and Python,