Dan Primack

U.S.-based venture capital funds raised just $1.7 billion in the second quarter of 2009, according to data released this morning by Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB) and the National Venture Capital Association. The results are in line with earlier reports, and represent the lowest quarterly total in more than six years. Just 25 funds raised capital last quarter, which is the smallest number since Q3 1996. The largest Q2 success story was Domain Associates, a healthcare-focused VC shop that secured $371.1 million for its eighth fund. Get data charts after the jump...

Looks like the U.S. government may solve its budget shortfall by utilizing the services of a certain VC-backed startup. Well, at least in The Onion's alternate universe... US To Trade Gold Reserves For Cash Through Cash4Gold.com

Online radio network Pandora has raised $35 million in new VC funding, according to multiple sources familiar with the deal. No word yet on who’s leading the round, or which existing shareholders re-upped. Pandora had previously raised around $29 million, from firms like Crosslink Capital, DBL Investors, Hearst Corp., Labrador Ventures, Selby Venture Partners and WaldenVC. [Update: The company has emailed to say Greylock is leading the round, with partner David Sze joining the Pandora board of directors. Pandora declined to comment on the round's size or valuation] What’s particularly interesting here is that the new financing was signed while Pandora’s very existence was in jeopardy. The company had been operating under a royalty structure that caused it to shell out nearly 70% of its revenue to record labels, and which was expected to increase by nearly 33% next year. Pandora founder Tim Westergren referred to it as a “crisis,” and TechCrunch wrote that the company may need to be “sacrificed before artists and labels to realize just how absurd their position is.”

What follows are ten VC deals culled from recent Regulation D filings with the SEC. They have not been otherwise disclosed: * Qik, a San Mateo, Calif.-based mobile video broadcasting service, has raised around $5.5 million in new VC funding (including $1.8m as a note conversion). Quest Venture Partners was the only listed investor. The company previously raised two rounds of funding from Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Arjun Gupta (Telesoft Partners) and George Garrick (Jingle Networks). www.qik.com

Jim Robinson IV of RRE Ventures was on CNBC earlier this morning, live from Sun Valley. He talked about VC willingness to invest, dealflow and (of course) Twitter. He also gave a nice promo to Howard Lindzon's StockTwits, never got asked about Clear (he was on the board) and broke a bit of news: RRE has participated in an (apparently) undisclosed new round of funding for Revolution Money, a St. Petersburg, Fla.-based personal payment network that includes both credit cards and a P2P payment system(a la PayPal). Robinson says the new deal is for between $15 and $20 million, and follows nearly $100 million in prior capital from Steve Case, Ted Leonsis, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and others. Video after the jump...

Venture capital funds raised just $5.1 billion in the first half of 2009, according to data released this morning by Dow Jones. This represents a 63% drop from the same period last year, and is the slowest first half since 2003. The decrease was felt across sub-asset class. Early-stage firms raised $2.7 billion for 36 funds, compared to the $5.2 billion raised by 43 funds in the first half of 2008. Late-stage firms were off more than 53%, while multi-stage funds were down more than 68 percent. Expect these numbers to be largely mirrored in an upcoming report from the National Venture Capital Association and Thomson Reuters (publisher of peHUB). The overall first-half total

Quantcast, a San Francisco-based provider of online audience analytics, is looking to raise around $50 million at a $300 million pre-money valuation, peHUB has learned. One source tells us that the company has already received multiple term sheets, but no identities of the lead investors (maybe strategic?) or if the offered terms match what QuantCast is seeking. The raise coincides with a strategic evolution for Quantcast, which recently rolled out a targeted ad platform that utilizes its direct measuring software. As the

Rob Day, a Boston-area cleantech VC, this morning emailed to announce that he had left @Ventures to become a partner with Black Coral Capital. I called to contribute my congratulations and then asked, “What the hell is Black Coral Capital?” Day says that Black Coral a new private equity firm focused on cleantech, with a broad investment mandate that could […]

Private equity fundraising last quarter rose by 28% to $76.2 billion, according to data released this morning by industry research firm Preqin. That total comes from 82 funds from all over the world, including vehicles focused on buyouts ($33.9b), natural resources ($9.9b), real estate ($8.9b), secondaries ($8.4b), venture capital ($4.7b), fund-of-funds ($7.7b) and mezzanine ($1.2b). Sounds kind of impressive on first glance, but the topline number should not overshadow what is mostly a nnegative report. Among the downers: - The Q209 tally is off more than 60% from the $213 billion raised in Q208 (which was an all-time record). - The number of funds currently seeking capital has dropped by 10% over the past three months. This includes some of the 30 abandoned fundraising efforts so far in 2009, which matches the entire 2008 total.

Five venture-backed companies went public in the second quarter of 2009, which is an infinite improvement from the prior two quarters' grand total of zero. Moreover, the $720 million raised by those five companies was the highest quarterly tally since Q4 2007, when 31 VC-backed companies raised $3.04 billion. Each of the five offerings was trading above its offering price, as of today's market open, with an average increase of 22.35 percent. Here is your quintet: