Thursday, August 9, 2007Nereus Pharmaceuticals Raises $45MSan Diego-based Nereus Pharmaceuticals said Thursday that it has raised $45M in a Series D-2 financing. The new round of funding for the biopharmaceuticals firm was led by BankInvest Biomedical Venture of Copenhagen, and also included Roche Venture Fund, Astellas Venture Management, Boston Life Science Venture Corporation, Taiwan Global Biofund and Eminent Venture Capital Corporation. Existing investors in the round included HBM BioVentures, Alta Partners, Forward Ventures, Advent International, (More info...)
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Southern California Teams Advance In DARPA Robot RaceThe Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced this morning that it has named semifinalists for the upcoming DARPA Urban Challenge, the autonomous robot race scheduled for November. The race pits fully automated vehicles against a racecourse set in an urban setting. The Urban Challenge is a follow up to DARPA's Grand Challenge, which resulted in the first fully autonomous, robot car to make its way across a desert racecourse without human guidance. Among the Southern California (More info...)
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Masimo Raises $202M In IPOIrvine-based Masimo, a provider of medical devices for patient monitoring, raised $202M in its IPO on the Nasdaq Wednesday. The firm, which trades under the symbol MASI, jumped more than 18 percent in its debut yesterday. The IPO was underwritten by Piper Jaffray, Deutsche Bank Securities, Citigroup Global Markets, Cowen & Co., and Thomas Weisel Partners. Masimo's products include noninvasive sensors for pulse oximetry.
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Movielink Acquired By BlockbusterSanta Monica-based video download service Movielink has been acquired by Blockbuster, the video rental chain, in a deal that was announced late Wednesday. Blockbuster did not disclose terms of the deal. Movielink, a joint venture of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. Studios, offers Internet-based movie rentals and download-to-own titles. Movielink was started in 2002. Blockbuster said that it plans to continue to oper (More info...)
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Spot Runner Pulls In $32MLos Angeles-based SpotRunner, which operates an online service that allows businesses to buy television advertising spots, has quietly raised another $32M in capital, according to numbers released by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. In the PwC/NVCA quarterly venture capital report, SpotRunner was reported to have raised $32M in capital during Q2 of 2007. The funding has not yet been announced by the company. The firm has previously raised funding from Battery (More info...)
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Jacked Quietly Lands $6.7MSanta Monica-based Jacked, a stealthy Internet start-up which describes itself as building a digital media platform to "hotwire their TVs," has quietly raised $6.7M in a venture capital round. The funding was disclosed as part of the recently released PricewaterhouseCoopers/NVCA quarterly venture capital report. No details of the funding have been released, however Core Capital Partners and Gabriel Venture Partners both list the firm now on its web site. The firm previously received seed funding (More info...)
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Barbie Virtual World Trumpets User NumbersEl Segundo-based Mattel has announced user numbers for the company's online virtual world, BarbieGirls.com, saying that it now has 4 million registered users. The virtual world, which was launched three months ago, allows girls to chat online with others, interact and create characters and their own virtual rooms. The firm also said that it has debuted a new Barbie Girl device, a USB-enabled, music/MP3 player and doll which connects into the firm's virtual world. The device will unlock additiona (More info...)
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Emulex Adds 8Gb Storage ProductsCosta Mesa-based Emulex said yesterday that it plans to deliver a new family of 8Gb/s Fibre Channel products to the storage market. The provider of host bus adapters and other products for the storage networking market said that it will provide both PCI Express-based HBAs and embedded controllers with 8Gb/s support, the latest speed increase in the popular storage networking protocol. Current products operate at 4Gb/s. Emulex competitor Qlogic also announced 8Gb/sec products Thursday morning. Em (More info...)
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Visual Sciences Gets Search WinSan Diego-based Visual Sciences, a provider of web analytics and other web software, said today that the Commonwealth Financial Network is using the firm's site search tool. Commonwealth is replacing an existing site search solution with Visual Sciences Search, Visual Sciences web search and analytics tool. Financial details of the win were not disclosed. Commonwealth is a broker/dealer with offices in Waltham, Mass., and San Diego. Visual Sciences was previously known as Websidestory.
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