Thursday, June 30, 2016


Reports: Tidal, Apple In Acquisition Talks
A report from the WSJ late Thursday said that Apple Computer is in discussions with music service Tidal--founded by Jay-Z--to acquire the company. No pricing details on the potential deal--which the Journal said "may not result in a deal"--were released.
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Woven Digital Takes $18M More In Funding
Los Angeles-based Woven Digital, which develops original video content aimed at the pop culture and millennial male market, has raised $18.5M in a Series B funding. The funding was led by WPP Ventures, along with Institutional Venture Partners and Advancit Capital. The company said the funding will go to scale its coverage of news, sports, and entertainment. Woven Digital, which is led by Colin Digiaro, runs such brands as Uproxx, Hitfix, and BroBible.
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How Kaleo Is Tackling Enterprise Knowledge Sharing
Phil Hui-Bon-Hoa, the CEO of El Segundo-based Kaleo (www.kaleosoftware.com), is a serial entrepreneur who has previously built and sold four companies, including one acquired by IFILM, and another by Sun Microsystems. He's now hard at work at a new company, Kaleo, which is tackling the enterprise, knowledge sharing market—and already has an impressive list of Fortune 500 customers. We spoke with Phil about his new company, which is backed by OMERS Ventures, Saturn Partners, Karlin Ventures, Qu (More info...)
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ProducePay Harvests $2.5M
Los Angeles-based ProducePay, which develops a service to help farmers better manage their cash flow, has raised $2.5M in a seed funding round, the company said this week. The funding came from Menlo Ventures, Arena Ventures, CoVenture, Red Bear Angels and Social Leverage. ProducePay is led by Pablo Borquez.
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BandwidthX Scores Strategic Investment From Orange Digital
Carlsbad-based BandwidthX, which provides an online marketplace for third party, Wi-Fi networks--targeted at helping mobile operators scale their cellular networks--said it has received a strategic investment from Orange Digital. The size of the investment was not announced by the company. BandwidthX's real-time marketpace lets mobile operators buy up unused, Wi-Fi capacity from broadband Internet service providers, helping them to offload the load on their mobile data networks. Nicolas Demassie (More info...)
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All Def Digital Gets $10M
Culver City-based All Def Digital, an urban youth programming media brand co-founded by Sanjay Sharma and Russell Simmons, has raised $10M in a Series B financing. The funding was led by Third Wave Digital partners, and also included WPP Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, along with Nu Horizons, Greycroft Partners, eVentures and Advancit Capital. All Def Digital said the funding will go towards original programming, distribution, and brand marketing services. Third Wave Digital Partners is the inves (More info...)
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ReVision Optics Gets FDA Approval
Lake Forest-based implantable, corneal inlay maker ReVision Optics has received FDA approval on the company's Raindrop Near Vision Inlay, the company reported late Wednesday. ReVision Optics' implantable, presbyopia-correcting corneal inlay helps improve the visio of patients, by reshaping the anterior curvature of the cornea. The company said its technology can handle patients with refraction of +1.00 D to -0.50 D. ReVision Optics said it now aniticipates commercialization of its product beginn (More info...)
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Inphi Sells Business Unit To Rambus
Inphi, the semiconductor developer which has a major part of its operation in Westlake Village, has sold off its Memory Interconnect Business unit to Rambus, the companies said this morning. According to the two, Rambus will pay $90M in cash for the business, acquiring product inventory, customer contracts, supply chain agreements and intellectual property. Inphi said that the move will allow it to better focus on opportunities in the communications markets. It's unclear how that sale will impac (More info...)
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Esri Rolls Out Drone Mapping Tool
Redlands-based geographical information systems (GIS) developer Esri has rolled out a new tool, to process and handle imagery from drones. According to Esri, its new Drone2Map software was released into beta, and allows its users to process images from drones for mapping, analysis, and sharing within the company's ArcGIS platform. Esri said the tool is aimed at use in land analysis and infrastructure inspection, plus monitoring events such as natural disasters or environmental changes.
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HomeMe Names Two Executives
Los Angeles-based HomeMe, which develops an app to pre-approve renters for apartments, has named two executives, the company said earlier this week. The company said it has named Raj Chauhan as Chief Revenue Officer and Natalie Cariola as Vice President of Sales. Chauhan has previously served at Adslot Technologies, OpenX Technologies, Rubicon Project, Move, and Yahoo!, and had founded online ad networks Banner Brokers and ClickAgents. Cariola was most recently at Compass, and also served at New (More info...)
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CallFire Powers Political Campaigns With Partnership
Santa Monica-based Callfire is teaming up with another company to help power political campaigns and non-profits, the firm said this week. CallFire, which offers up a cloud-based platform for text and voice messaging and APIs, said it has linked up with CFB Strategies, which provides data management services to political campaigns and nonprofits. Financial details of the link were not disclosed. The two said CFB Strategies will use CallFire's call center, voice broadcast, and SMS technology for (More info...)
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