Silicon Valley Wire

San Francisco-Based Vungle Lands $2 Million in New Funding

San Francisco -- Vungle, a San Francisco-based provider of services designed to help mobile developers promote their apps through video "trailers," said on Wednesday it has raised $2 million in a new round of funding. Participants included Google Ventures, AOL Ventures, Crosslink Capital and angel investors such as Charles Hudson's SoftTech VC, Ron Conway's SV Angel, Dave McClure's 500 Startups, Maynard Webb, Scott McNealy and Tim Draper. The company plans to use the funds to bolster hiring, as well as build out its product platform. A beta program for developers is planned for early this summer. "Our vision is to give mobile app developers an effective and cost-effective way to make real money through the applications they offer to the world," said Zain Jaffer, the company's co-founder and CEO.
http://www.vungle.com 
http://vungle.com/img/Vungle_Raises_2_Million_for_Mobile_Developers_to_Promote_Apps_through_Video_Trailers.pdf (PDF)

IBM to Acquire San Francisco-Based Tealeaf Technology

San Francisco -- Computing giant IBM said on Wednesday it will acquire San Francisco-based Tealeaf Technology, a developer of customer experience analytics software designed to help users react more swiftly to consumer trends. Financial terms of the deal, expected to close by midyear, were not disclosed. Tealeaf's software records and analyzes a customer's website and mobile interactions, helping marketers spot patterns and address issues in website and mobile application design. The company has more than 450 clients, including Dell, Wells Fargo, GEICO, Orbitz, Crate & Barrel, Neiman Marcus, Expedia, Zappos, ING Direct, Best Buy, DirecTV and StubHub. "With these new capabilities from Tealeaf, we can not only provide chief marketing officers and other marketing leaders the qualitative insights into how customers actually experience their brands, but show them how to react in real time across marketing, sales and service," said Craig Hayman, IBM's general manager of industry solutions.
http://www.tealeaf.com/
http://www.ibm.com
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/37593.wss

San Francisco-Based Birst Lands $26 Million in New Funding

San Francisco -- Birst, a San Francisco-based developer of agile business intelligence tools, said on Wednesday it has raised $26 million in a new round of funding, led by Sequoia Capital. Previous backers Hummer Winblad and DAG Ventures who participated in the round, which the company will use, in part, to expand into new markets. The news caps of a year in which the company has unveiled an array of new offerings, including a web-based business intelligence appliance, an in-memory database optimized specifically for analytics, a cloud-based mobile business intelligence SDK for the iPad, and support for Hadoop and Big Data analytics. Customers include Aruba Networks, Five9, Host Analytics, Motorola, Saba, SunCap Financial and Swann Insurance.
http://www.birst.com
http://www.birst.com/company/press/birst-secures-26-million-financing-led-sequoia-capital

San Francisco-Based DataSift Raises $7.2 Million in New Funding

San Francisco -- DataSift, the San Francisco-based developer of a social data platform, said on Wednesday it has raised $7.2 million in a follow-on to its first round of funding. Previous backers GRP Partners and IA Ventures led the round, which the company will use to accelerate growth. "While we were not actively looking for financing, we were lucky to receive a fantastic offer from our existing investors that will enable us to continue building our business without the distraction of raising a funding round," said CEO Rob Bailey. DataSift, which launched in November, also announced it has moved into new offices in San Francisco's SOMA district. The company's platform aggregates social interactions from over a million public social data sources, such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs, forums and online message boards. It also recently integrated with NewsCred, extending its ability to monitor not just social media, but also news articles, to understand how the news spreads through the social web.
http://www.datasift.com/
http://blog.datasift.com/2012/05/02/datasift-adds-7-2m-the-story-so-far/

San Francisco-Based Appthority Raises $6.25 Million in First Round

San Francisco -- Appthority, a San Francisco-based developer of app security tools, said on Wednesday it has raised $6.25 million in its first round of funding, co-led by Venrock and US Venture Partners (USVP). Gunderson Dettmer also participated in the round, which the company will use to fuel growth, scale operations and expand its footprint in San Francisco. Ray Rothrock and Steve Krausz, partners at Venrock and USVP, respectively, will join the company's board of directors. Appthority's platform is designed to help companies identify and manage risks hidden in mobile apps, such as malware, corporate data exfiltration, location tracking and keystroke recording. "With new tablets and smartphones entering the workplace, our solution is helping fill a serious security gap for the enterprise," said Domingo Guerra, the company's co-founder and president. "This financing will help us become the authority on app reputation, serve new customers, and on-board additional partners."
http://www.appthority.com
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/appthority-secures-funding-to-rate-risky-app-behavior-1651703.htm

Equinix to Expand into Asia-Pacific Through Acquisition

Redwood City, Calif. -- Looking to expand into the Asia-Pacific region, Redwood City-based Equinix, a provider of data center services, said on Tuesday it will pay $230.5 million in cash to acquire data centers from Hong Kong-based Asia Tone. The deal, expected to close after mid-year, includes five data centers and one disaster recovery center, in addition to one data center under construction. "As our fastest growing region for several years and one in high demand by customers, we see tremendous opportunity for growth," said Steve Smith, the president and CEO of Equinix. "We are especially pleased to expand our footprint in China."
http://www.equinix.com
http://www.equinix.com/en_US/company/news-and-events/press-releases/equinix-to-expand-in-asia-pacific-will-acquire-data-centers-from-asia-tone-in-cash-deal/

CoStar Group Completes Acquisition of San Francisco-Based LoopNet

Bethesda, Md. -- A year after first announcing plans to acquire San Francisco-based rival LoopNet, Maryland-based CoStar Group, a provider of commercial real estate data and analytic services, said it has finally completed the $860 million deal. Under the agreement, LoopNet shareholders received $16.50 in cash and 0.037 shares of CoStar stock for each share of LoopNet stock. CoStar plans to continue operating LoopNet as a separate brand. LoopNet.com has 5.8 million registered members and currently has approximately 3.6 million unique monthly visitors. "The LoopNet brand is important," said Andrew Florance, the founder and CEO of CoStar. "Our strategy is to invest in strengthening LoopNet's products and services." LoopNet's stock has suspended trading on the Nasdaq.
http://www.costar.com
http://www.costar.com/about/article.aspx?id=10875

Palo Alto-Based Socialtext Lands Investment from Bedford Funding

Palo Alto, Calif. -- Socialtext, a Palo Alto-based developer of enterprise social software, said on Tuesday it has landed a new investment from Bedford Funding. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. "With this and future available capital, and a currently profitable business, we are very excited by the ability to invest in the resources that will strengthen our position," said Eugene Lee who will remain CEO. Bedford is also the owner of Peoplefluent, a developer of talent-management tools, which plans to integrate Socialtext's software into its own offerings. Socialtext's software is designed to help businesses communicate, collaborate on internal projects and connect on the information necessary to be more effective in the workplace.
http://www.socialtext.com
http://www.socialtext.com/news/pressrelease_2012.05.01.php

San Francisco-Based Castlight Health Raises $100 Million in Funding

San Francisco -- Castlight Health, a San Francisco-based developer of software that makes cost and quality data for medical services available to employees through the web or mobile devices, said on Tuesday it has raised $100 million in its fourth round of funding. Participants included two unnamed mutual funds, as well as T. Rowe Price, Redmile Group and several previous backers. "By expanding our funding, we can respond to the growing demand for our solutions, seize major market opportunities, increase the breadth of our offerings and extend our reach," said co-founder and CEO Giovanni Colella. "We believe there is a huge opportunity to better engage companies and their employees as they make health care decisions." Castlight now has raised $181 million since its inception.
http://www.castlighthealth.com
http://www.castlighthealth.com/2012/castlight-health-secures-100-million-in-series-d-funding/

Santa Clara-Based CrestaTech Raises $13 Million in New Funding

Santa Clara, Calif. -- CrestaTech, a Santa Clara-based developer of "smart tuners" for TV and mobile devices, said on Monday it has raised $13 million in a round of funding co-led by Bechtolsheim Ventures, Benhamou Global Ventures, Sofinnova Ventures and AVM Capital. The company said the funding will help it release several new products this year. Originally marketed under the Xceive brand, CrestaTech's architecture features an RF tuner and a programmable digital signal processor (DSP). Several flat panel TV makers now use the technology, which enables region-free TV reception on any device. CrestaTech said its chips and software will soon be found in a variety of mobile devices, including notebooks, tablets, smartphones and media players. "Our products enable a single global platform for the TV of the future that is adaptable to support the cloud services, applications and feature sets found in mobile devices," said CEO George Haber.
http://www.crestatech.com/
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120430005760/en/CrestaTech-Secures-13M-Develop-Smart-Tuners-TV

San Jose-Based NeoPhotonics Lands Investment from Rusnano

San Jose, Calif. -- NeoPhotonics, a San Jose-based maker of photonic integrated circuits used in high-speed communications networks, said on Monday it has landed a new $39.8 million investment from Russian investment firm Rusnano. Under the deal, the company sold 4.97 newly issued shares to Rusnano for $8 each, and appointed Sergey Polikarpov, Rusnano's managing director, to its board of directors. NeoPhotonics said it will use a portion of the proceeds to establish design and production capabilities in Russia, a market being targeted by a growing number of its clients  "We started to see and investigate this growth opportunity several years ago, and we added sales capability in the region and have since been engaged with and supplying several customers in Russia," said Tim Jenks, the chairman, president and CEO of NeoPhotonics. "With the planned support from Rusnano, we believe that NeoPhotonics is well-positioned to capitalize on new and greater opportunities in the region."
http://www.neophotonics.com
http://www.neophotonics.com/news/newsneo_1688884.aspx

San Mateo-Based ShopCo Names Ben Smith IV as CEO

San Mateo, Calif. -- ShopCo, the San Mateo-based owner and operator of Find n Save local shopping sites, has named Ben Smith IV as its CEO. Smith most recently served as the co-founder, chairman and CEO of MerchantCircle, a local Internet media company he sold in 2011. Prior to that, he held various senior leadership positions at Borland Software, including senior vice president of corporate development and CEO of spin-off CodeGear. He also has been the chairman and CEO of Spoke.com where he remains on the board of directors. ShopCo is a shopping partnership backed by media companies such as Hearst Corp., MediaNews Group and The Washington Post.
http://www.findnsave.com
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/ben-t-smith-iv-named-chief-executive-officer-of-digital-media-partnership-1650186.htm

Twelve Named to 2012 Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame Class

San Francisco -- The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) on Monday announced the 2012 class of inductees into its Consumer Electronics (CE) Hall of Fame. The class includes 12 members selected by a panel of media and industry representatives, who judged nominations submitted online by manufacturers, retailers and journalists. Among the honorees are Robert Briskman, the inventor of satellite radio; Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the computer mouse and HTML; Charlie Ergen, the founder of satellite companies Echostar and Dish Network; and Fansy and Henry Harold Gregg, the founders of consumer electronics retailer HH Gregg. A complete list is available at the link below. All will be inducted into the CE Hall of Fame during the CEA's Industry Forum, to be held in San Francisco Oct. 14-17.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120430006488/en/CEA-Names-Industry-Leaders-Inducted-CE-Hall