Friday, August 18, 2006


NASA Invests $500M In Commercial Firms For Spacecraft
NASA said Friday that it is investing $500M in two commercial firms to develop commercial space vehicles. The agency said that it is investing in El Segundo, California-based SpaceX, and Oklahoma-based Rocketplane-Kistler to develop and demonstrate vehicles, which it hopes will create a competitive market for supply flights to the International Space Station. The agency said it hopes to become customers for the firms once the space shuttle is retired. NASA said that demonstrations are scheduled (More info...)
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GenuTec Files For IPO
Laguna Niguel-based GenuTec, a firm that develops interactive voice response (IVR) and notification services, filed for an IPO earlier this week, looking to raise up to $25M on the NASDAQ. The firm reported a loss of $1.4M on sales of $14.65M in 2005, and income of $847,000 on sales of $9.7M for the six months ending March 31. The IPO is being underwritten by Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc. and Roth Capital Partners. The firm is looking to be listed on the Nasdaq as GENU.
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Clearstone Opens Mumbai, India Office
Santa Monica-based Clearstone Venture Partners said this week that it has opened up an office in Mumbai, India. The new office wil be headed by Rahul Khanna, who the firm said will identify and support portfolio companies. Clearstone is focusing its Indian investments in high-growth domestic consumption sectors, including telecom, media, entertainment, and financial serviecs. Investments will come out of its existing funds. The firm also said that already has invested $5M in Iindiaideas.com, a p (More info...)
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Qualcomm Buys Mobile Test Provider
San Diego-based Qualcomm has acquired another San Diego-based firm, Qualphone, in a deal worth $18M in cash. Qualphone is a provider of mobile sofware and test services for next generation phones. Qualcomm said that the purchase will help it to accelerate the delivery of attractive and more feature-rich devices to subscribers in European and other markets. Qualphone provides embedded client software for IP-based multimedia subsystems, along with interoperability testing of mobile devices.
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Incuity Adds VP
Mission Viejo-based Incuity Software has added a new Vice President, saying yesterday that it has appointed Don Allen as VP of corporate communications. Allen was formerly founding partner of investor and public relations firm The Allen Group. Incuity is a developer of software for data management and business intelligence for the manufacturing and process industry. Incuity just raised a round of funding from American River Ventures, Palomar Ventures, and others.
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Nexsan Ties Into Archiving Software
Woodland Hills-based Nexsan Technologies said this week that it has entered into apartnership with Pegasus, a provider of software for the management of optical archives. Pegasus will integrate its archiving and storage management software with Nexsan's content-addressed storage products. Nexsan's Assureon CAS product allows users to backup and archive information onto optical storage libraries.
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Digital Insight Gets Customer Win
Calabasas-based Digital Insight is reporting that it has a new customer at Anchorage, Alaska-based Northrim Bank. The bank will use the firm's Internet Banking, Business Banking, and online Bill Payment services to serve its 30,000 consumer and business customers. The terms of the multi-year agreement were not disclosed. Digital Insight is a provider of online banking services for banks and credit unions.
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