Luisa Beltran
Cyber-Rain has completed a $1.8 million Series B funding round with DeWaay Investment Partners as lead investor. Athenian Venture Partners is a new investor while Momentum Venture Management and Funk Ventures joined the round. Adam Claypool, Managing Director of DeWaay’s Investment Partners, has joined the Cyber-Rain board while Athenian will nominate someone to the board. Encino, Calif.-based Cyber-Rain provides smart sprinkler controller systems to the residential and commercial markets.
Clustrix, which is backed Sequoia Capital and U.S. Venture Partners, said Monday that both John Listwin and Jonathan Heiliger have joined its board. Listwin, who is also an investor of Clustrix, was executive VP of Cisco and is the founder and chairman of Canary Foundation. Heiliger is the VP of technical operations at Facebook. San Franisco-based Clustrix provides clustered database systems.
Glengary, a Cleveland VC frim, said Friday that it has sold Tooling University to the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Financial terms were not announced. Tooling U, also of Cleveland, provides online classes for manufacturers.
Halfpenny Technologies has secured $2.6 million in VC funding co-led by Osage Venture Partners and Milestone Venture Partners. LORE Associates also participated in the round. Blue Bell, Pa.-based Halfpenny is a health information exchange services provider.
Convergence Pharmaceuticals has received $35.4 million in Series A financing from New Leaf Venture Partners, Apposite Capital and SV Life Sciences. Cambridge, U.K. Convergence is a biotech focused on the development of analgesic compounds. GlaxoSmithKline has an 18% stake in Convergence.
No World Borders said Tuesday that it has closed a second round of funding led by Los Angeles-based Palos Verdes Venture Partners. No World Borders, of Newport Beach, Calif., is a healthcare management and IT consulting firm.
AppNexus has raised $50 million in Series C funding. Investors in the round include Microsoft, a long time customer. All of AppNexus's Series B VC backers including Venrock, Kodiak Venture Partners and First Round Capital invested in the C round. AppNexus is a New York-based maker of a virtualized cloud computing platform for online advertising applications.
Exits are longer to come by in the VC world, says Don Rainey, a general partner with Grotech Ventures.
Last week, Madison Dearborn Partners bought a majority stake in Fieldglass, which provides software that lets companies manage their temporary labor force. The transaction provided an exit for Grotech, an early-stage investor that has funded firms including Broadsoft, MedAssets and Verity. Grotech held its Fieldglass stake for five years. "That is the state of the exit markets nowadays," Rainey says. "It's not atypical to have six, seven or eight year holding periods."
ePlanet Ventures has invested $4.8 million in Auro Mira Energy Co. Private Ltd, a clean energy company in India. The investment was part of a $21 million second round of funding.
Think Finance, which is backed by Sequoia Capital and Technology Crossover Ventures, has secured a $90 million credit facility that it will use to provide more products to consumers with less than stellar credit histories.
Founded in 2001, Think Finance targets the needs of the “unbanked,” offering things like prepaid debit cards, lines of credit and payday or installment loans to consumers who don’t have traditional bank accounts. It plans to use the $90 million credit line, from Victory Park Capital Advisors, to offer more of these products, says Ken Rees, CEO of Think Finance.