Follow The Money: 10 Recent Tech VC Investments To Watch In December

Heading Into 2014 VC Style

Some startups got a multimillion-dollar holiday gift this year as they unwrapped a package of venture capital funding to grow their businesses in 2014. December saw venture capital investments take hold in healthcare cloud platforms, Internet of Things opportunities, business intelligence and much more.

Take a look at 10 cool venture capital investments from this month to keep an eye on for next year.

Anturius

Headquarters: San Francisco
CEO: Sergey Nevstruev
New Funding: $2 million
Round: A
Backers: Runa Capital, VEB Innovations


Anturius works to bring enterprise-grade 24/7 IT infrastructure monitoring down to the SMB level in a way that is cost effective without cutting back on any of the functionalities. The product is a cloud-based SaaS monitoring platform that "bridges the gap" between expensive enterprise solutions and Open Source options. The funding will be used to grow the company's reach internationally, grow sales and marketing, and further develop the product.

Orange Chef Company

Headquarters: San Francisco
CEO: Santiago Merea
New Funding: $1.2 million
Round: Seed funding
Backers: Google Ventures, SparkLabs Global Ventures, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI), Kima Ventures, The Social+Capital Partnership, Graph Ventures, angel investors


Your cutting board can now tell you, or at least your iOS device, how much you're eating and what it's made of, thanks to Orange Chef Company. Its newly announced product Prep Pad jumps on board of the Internet of Things trend, connecting your cooking to your devices to help track your diet and cooking. The company said in a statement that it expects massive growth in 2014, as it uses the funding to grow headcount and product offerings.

Ooyala

Headquarters: Mountain View, Calif.
CEO: Jay Fulcher
New Funding: $43 million
Round: Undisclosed
Backers: Telstra


As more and more users are streaming video content on their many devices, especially long-form and live content, Ooyala is positioned well to grab hold of the multibillion-dollar industry with its online video management, publishing analytics and monetization offerings. The company has already attracted notice from big names like Univision, ESPN, the PGA Tour and Bloomberg, which all use Ooyala services.

Telstra, the largest telecommunications company in Australia, is jumping on board, with an investment of $43 million in Ooyala, bringing the company's venture capital investment total to $122 million. The latest round of investment will be used for product innovation and expanding its market base.

Datameer

Headquarters: San Mateo, Calif.
CEO: Stefan Groschupf
New Funding: $19 million
Round: D
Backers: Workday, Citi Ventures, Software AG, Next World Capital (NWC) Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Redpoint Ventures


After tripling in size and rapidly growing its customer count over the past year, business intelligence company Datameer now has $19 million in venture capital funding, which it plans to use to meet growing enterprise demand and expand internationally. The company works to provide self-serve big data analytics for Hadoop, including to big name customers like Visa, Sears and CDW. "This funding is entirely about allowing us to meet the nonstop global demand for our product. Across every industry, companies are moving past Hadoop science projects and realizing they need a proven big data analytics tool that finally frees them from schemas and ETL," said Stefan Groschupf, CEO of Datameer in a prepared statement.

Catchpoint

Headquarters: New York City
CEO: Mehdi Daoudi
New Funding: $6 million
Round: B
Backers: Battery Ventures


Catchpoint, led by former DoubleClick and Google executives, provides its more than 150 customers with Web and infrastructure monitoring solutions. It conducted 2.8 billion tests in the last year alone to help improve Web and mobile performance for its clients. The new funding will be used for development and to expand globally. "Designed from a consumer perspective, our solutions are changing the way companies monitor and resolve performance issues, like error messages or the revolving circle of death," said Mehdi Daoudi, CEO and founder of Catchpoint, said in a prepared statement. "We help companies find and fix issues before they become a headache for their consumers or a revenue roadblock, and the new funding from Battery Ventures will help us do that on a global scale much quicker."

CyanogenMod

Headquarters: Seattle and Palo Alto, Calif.
CEO: Kirt McMaster
New Funding: $23 million
Round: B
Backers: Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Tencent


As part of its step up beyond a hacker Android system, CyanogenMod has raised $23 million in venture capital funding to make strides toward becoming an indispensable Android mobile component. The company creates an open-source customizable Android OS. The latest financial windfall brings the company's total venture capital funding to $30 million and will be used to grow employee headcount by 60 employees in the next year and expand the amount of Android devices that come with the OS out of the box.

Flint

Headquarters: Redwood City, Calif.
CEO: Greg Goldfarb
New Funding: $2 million
Round: B
Backers: Verizon Investments


Flint has raised $2 million in new venture capital funding, bringing the mobile payments startup's total to $11 million.

While there are other mobile payment apps out there for iOS and Android, most notably PayPal Here and Square, Flint sets itself apart by using the camera, instead of a detachable device, to scan credit or debit cards. The company already has 200,000 downloads and will use the new funding to continue expanding and developing the product.

Shift

Headquarters: Santa Monica, Calif.
CEO: James Borow
New Funding: $6 million
Round: B
Backers: DN Capital


Already the top choice for 10 of the 20 top global advertisers, Shift has received $6 million in additional venture capital funding to grow the company's Open Marketing Cloud, a marketing app ecosystem within Shift's marketing platform. As the company looks to expand more globally, Europe-based DN Capital's investment will be especially helpful in helping grow the company internationally, the company said in a statement, with the first international office opening in London last September.

Infinio

Headquarters: Cambridge, Mass.
CEO: Arun Agarwal
New Funding: $12 million
Round: B
Backers: Bessemer Venture Partners, Highland Capital Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Osage


Infinio launched its first product, Infinio Accelerator, in November of this year, providing a downloadable storage performance to clients in a variety of industries.

"It's been a great year for Infinio," said company Co-founder and CEO Arun Agarwal in a prepared statement. "On the day we launched, we already had one paying customer, and have added more steadily in the weeks since GA ... We have a proven product, a diverse customer base, a talented team of employees, and now an even stronger financial position going into 2014."

ClearDATA Networks, Inc.

Headquarters: Phoenix
CEO: Darin Brannan
New Funding: $14 million
Round: B
Backers: Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Excel Venture Management and Norwest Venture Partners


The global IT market is estimated to grow to $56.7 billion by 2017, according to a study by MarketsandMarkets, and ClearDATA Networks is looking to capitalize on that through its healthcare cloud computing platform and services. The cloud computing platform is HIPAA compliant and already serves more than 300,000 healthcare clients with millions of records. "The IT demands on healthcare organizations are greater than ever -- and they will continue to grow as Big Data and analytics take hold in the industry," said Darin Brannan, CEO of ClearDATA in a statement. "Our investors recognize the escalating need for hosting and services in the cloud that can help these organizations reduce IT costs while improving productivity, reliability, security, regulatory compliance, business continuity and agility."