Tuesday, August 4, 2009V Vehicle Gets $62.25MSan Diego-based V Vehicle, the stealth energy efficient automobile firm, has raised $62.25M in a funding round which closed July 20th, according to a regulatory filing from the firm today. It's unclear if the funding is part of a reported $100M investment from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, or a new funding. V Vehicle has been mum about its plans for an energy efficient vehicle, but has purchased a defunct automotive plant in Monroe, Louisiana. The firm is also backed by T. Boone Pickens.
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Sorenson Media Holds Slice Of IPO PieSan Diego-based Sorenson Media, a provider of Internet video codecs and related software and services, is a potential beneficiary of an Internet IPO, that of Provo, Utah-based Ancestry.com. Sorenson--which maintains much of its operations in Utah, but now has Peter Csathy heading up its executive ranks in San Diego--was an investor in a quiet recap of Ancestry.com, which said Monday that it has filed for a $75M IPO. Sorenson Media invested alongside private equity firm Summit Partners in a 2007 (More info...)
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Hydra Partners With Brand Monitoring FirmBeverly Hills-based Hydra, which operates a cost-per-action (CPA) advertising network, disclosed Tuesday afternoon that the firm is in a partnership with brand monitoring firm BrandVerity. According to Hydra, the deal with BrandVerity will be used to detect unauthorized bidding on branded and select keywords on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Financial details on the business deal was not disclosed. BrandVerity's PoachMark service lets companies know when people are using their trademarks in their sear (More info...)
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San Diego News Network Gets $700KSan Diego News Network, an online, local community news site run by Neil Senturia and Barbara Bry, as well as former executives of the San Diego Union Tribune, has raised $707,220 in funding, part of a $2.0M funding effort by the company. The funding was disclosed in a regulatory filing Tuesday. SDNN operates an online local news site, driven both by partnerships with other news organizations, bloggers, and contributors. Details on the funding have not been released by SDNN. Neil Senturia and Ba (More info...)
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NASA Launches $1.5M Green Aircraft PrizeTaking a page from the X Prize Foundation, NASA has launched its own prize competition which challenges companies to create aircraft that can average at least 100 mph on a 200-mile flight, while getting greater than 200 passenger miles-per-gallon. NASA said it would award $1.5M to the best performance, and $150,000 to the best aircraft fueled by bio-fuel. The effort comes from NASA'a Innovative Partnerships Program and the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency (CAFE) Foundation. The X Prize Fou (More info...)
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TravBuddy.com Cheers Traffic, Claims GrowthRedondo Beach-based TravBuddy is reporting that the firm saw over one million unique visitors in July, saying that it is seeing "record growth" despite the slowdown in the travel industry. The firm attributed its growth to a "passionate and dedicated" user base. TravBuddy operates an online travel and social networking site which allows people to both arrange for travel partners, as well as for travel planning and finding information about destinations. The firm says over 7,000 of the site's mem (More info...)
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Sorenson Media Adds SDKSan Diego-based Sorenson Media, a developer of video encoding software and related services, is looking to enable third party developers, by releasing a new software development kit (SDK). The firm said today that its new SDK will allow developers to create their own custom media players which integrate with Sorenson's video publishing platform. The firm explained that its development kit is available for free to customers and developers, and requires as little as three lines of code to support (More info...)
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LiveOffice Claims Record RevenueTorrance-based LiveOffice, a provider of hosted email archiving and related services, reported today that the privately held firm had "record-setting" revenues in Q2. No actual financials were disclosed by the company, however, the firm said it now has over 9,000 clients using its services. LiveOffice is backed by private-equity firm Summit Partners, which invested in the company in 2007. LiveOffice said it had strong financial results, driven by an interest in cloud-based technology, along with (More info...)
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Freedom Meditech Gets Additional FinancingSan Diego-based Freedom Meditech, a developer of medical devices for measuring blood sugar in the diabetic, said today that it has raised a second tranche of funding in its Series A funding. Amount of the funding was not disclosed, however, a recent regulatory filing indicates that the firm had raised $630,004 out of a $2.5M funding round in May. The funding came from JumpStart Ventures and individuals. As part of the funding, the company said it has added Catherine Stiefel to its board of direc (More info...)
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Kotura Gets Win With SanturMonterey Park-based Kotura, a developer of photonic components, disclosed this morning that the firm has been selected by tunable lasers firm Santur as a partner. Kotura said that Santur has partnered with the firm on a 100 Gb/s platform, and will be using Kotura's 10-channel optical multiplexer chips. Financial impact of the win was not disclosed. Kotura said by using its chips, Santur is eliminating the need for hundreds of discrete components and a dozen fibers in its design.
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Sendio Upgrades Anti-Spam ProductIrvine-based Sendio, the email spam blocking startup backed by Athenian Venture Partners, Vicente Capital Partners, Shepherd Ventures and Momentum Venture Management, has upgraded the firm's products, saying that it has rolled out a new version of its software today. Sendio said the newest version of its product now includes new clustering capabilities for better fault tolerance, support for third party email archiving software, and Safari browser support. In particular, the firm said its produc (More info...)
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King.com Links With LifetimeLos Angeles- and London-based King.com, which operates an online casual games site, said today that it has linked up with Lifetime Digital Media on an online games effort. According to the two, King.com will be the exclusive provider of a co-branded, online games site as part of Lifetime's myLifetime.com web site. Financial details of the partnership were not disclosed. Lifetime Digital Media, which operates the Lifetime cable network, has around 3.6 million unique visitors.
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