Follow The Money: 10 Recent Tech VC Investments To Watch
While cloud and networking saw some investments as well, November brought in a lot of investments to retail technology, big data and mobile. Take a look at the roundup of venture capital investments in tech from last month.
Headquarters: Montpellier, France and Kansas City, MO
CEO: Rachel Delacour
New Funding: $4 million
Round: A
Backers: Alven Capital Partners
Immediately after its expansion into the U.S. with the opening of a dual headquarters in Kansas City, BIME received $4 million in venture capital funding from Paris-based Alven Capital Partners. The cloud business intelligence startup said its success is due to the rise of Big Data and creating a product that easily links data sets for analysis.
BIME will use the new funding to invest further in its BI product and to grow sales in North America, the company said in a statement.
Headquarters: Allentown, Penn.
CEO: Jim Lippie
New Funding: Undisclosed
Round: Equity
Backers: Jose A. Segrera
Former CFO of Terremark Worldwide Jose A. Segrera has invested an undisclosed amount in desktop-as-a-service vendor independenceIT. The company's signature product, Cloud Workspace, is in a good position to help the channel satisfy demand for DaaS in SMB clients, Segrera said.
independenceIT will use the money to expand its channel program and product development, the company said said in a statement.
Headquarters: San Francisco, Calif.
CEO: Marc Freed-Finnegan
New Funding: $7 million
Round: A
Backers: Innovation Endeavors, Khosla Ventures, AIMCo and 819 Capital
Index, a retail software company led by two former Google executives, landed $7 million and said it plans to continue working to help retailers take advantage of mobile and digital technologies.
By embracing Index's technology, retailers can improve their customer experience, CEO Marc Freed-Finnegan said in a company statement. For example, Index lets them personalize the shopping experience for each customer and improve marketing efforts.
Index plans to use the new funding to hire more staff and expand its retail customer base, the company said in a statement.
Headquarters: San Jose, Calif.
CEO: Emerick Woods
New Funding: $15 million
Round: D
Backers: Four Rivers Group, Menlo Ventures, Silver Creek Ventures
Talari Networks works to provide greater network reliability and capacity for enterprise clients. Its soon-to-be-released Adaptive Private Networking (APN) 3.0 operating software brings together broadband and leased-line WANs to create a more resilient and adaptable network.
The company said it plans to use the funding to pay off loans and fuel further growth.
Headquarters: San Mateo, Calif.
CEO: Garrett Larsson
New Funding: $5 million
Round: Undisclosed
Backers: Bessemer Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital
Mojave Networks provides cloud-based mobile security for enterprise clients to securely adapt to the challenges of the bring-your-own-device trend.
Mojave Networks' technology lets customers create their own network to track application and data usage, and identify malicious threats to both Android and iOS devices. The latest round of funding will be used for research and development and sales and partnership growth, the company said.
Headquarters: Westborough, Mass.
CEO: Doron Kempel
New Funding: $58 million
Round: C
Backers: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) Growth, DFJ Growth, Meritech Capital Partners, Swisscom Ventures, Accel, Charles River Ventures
With its virtualized infrastructure and global data architecture, SimpliVity's flagship product OmniCube is making big strides in the marketplace. The vendor said it has seen broad adoption over the past year for OmniCube, which uses "Lego-like" building blocks to make for easier adoption and scalability.
"SimpliVity is one of the biggest innovations in enterprise computing since VMware," said John Doerr, General Partner of Kleiner Perkins, and early backer of Sun Microsystems, Netscape, Google, and Amazon, in a press release. "Its OmniCube is radically simplifying IT infrastructure with systems that are better, faster, smaller and less expensive than competitive offerings. SimpliVity is well positioned to transform IT."
The company said it will use the funding to support further growth and expand its engineering team.
Headquarters: San Francisco, Calif.
CEO: Shane Dyer
New Funding: $11.9 million
Round: B
Backers: DCM Ventures, Intel Capital
With a focus on providing simple cloud connectivity solutions to accommodate the Internet of Things in the consumer space, Arrayent is making strides in how retailers can evolve the connectivity of all kinds of devices, from refrigerators to thermostats. Arrayent will use the funding to grow its global customer base and expand the platform, the company said in a statement.
Headquarters: Chicago, Ill.
CEO: Wes Shepherd
New Funding: $12 million
Round: B
Backers: Drive Capital
Bringing together retailers and manufacturers with data on sales, production and market information, Channel IQ provides an e-commerce management platform to its clients to help them monitor and improve sales. The product features include a big data hub and CRM. The company will use the funding to accelerate development.
“Big data isn’t enough. We need smart data … actionable data,” CEO Wes Shepherd said in the press release. “Data we find either represents a problem or an opportunity. We help manufacturers and retailers follow the data to its logical conclusion – a business action that that produces more profitable relationships.”
Headquarters: Ottawa, Ontario
CEO: Martin Horne
New Funding: $4 million
Round: C
Backers: Miralta Capital
After just announcing an acquisition of Openera, LiveQoS has received $4 million in financing to put towards the launch of LiveQaaS. The product is a mobile Quality as a Service platform that can now be delivered as a service, as well as on premise.
“This will enable us to meet the growing demands of mobile app developers and mobile device manufacturers who want to deliver the best quality of experience to their end-users. We are already working with some well-known companies and are excited for our further development," said CEO Martin Horne in the press release.
Headquarters: Waltham, Mass.
CEO: Subhash Roy
New Funding: $6.5 million
Round: Undisclosed
Backers: Sigma Prime Ventures, Venrock
In the fight against the "dreaded spinning wheel," as CEO Subhash Roy called it, QFactor is making strides to prevent data loss and improve experience quality in mobile technologies. The funding will be used to commercialize the product and improve media-rich content viewing on mobile devices. The company plans to make the product commercially available in early 2014.