Samsung and Apple have been battling it out in the smartphone arena for at least three years. The big question is: Who will conquer the world and get dominion in the consumer electronic business?
Sectors
Russia's Trellas invests $30 million in VidMind
Israel-based VidMind has just received $30 million in financing from Trellas, one of Russia's largest independent retail groups, which has already invested over $30 million in Vidmind.
Kiwi closes Series B with $15 million
Developer Kiwi secured another $15 million as it closed its Series B funding, with Northgate Capital leading the round along with other investors DFJ Venture and Sequioa Capital.
Druva gets $25 million in Series D, plans expansion to Asia and Europe
Druva announced that it received $25 million in Series D funding, led by Sequioa Capital and participated by Nexus Venture Partners and Tenaya Capital.
Spy agencies hit in cyber espionage campaign: Kaspersky Lab
Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab said they have uncovered a cyber espionage operation that successfully penetrated two spy agencies and hundreds of government and military targets in Europe and the Middle East since the beginning of this year.
Latest News
Chinese news reports that Beijing based-Memblaze has completed Series C funding with $20 million. Investors include Bertelsmann Asia Investments, Israel's Infinity Group, ZTE Corporation's Ding Xing Fund, and Genertec Investment Managers Ltd.
Retention Science managed to raise $7 million in Series A funding, backed by Upfront Ventures, and earlier investors including Baroda Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures as well as so-called angel investors. With the recent funding, the company reportedly plans to hire sales and marketing staff, as well as more data scientists who can demonstrate "retention marketing" beyond retail.
The US National Institutes of Health has awarded Oraya Therapeutics with a $215,000 Small Business Technology Transfer Grant to investigate gold nanoparticles development.
Backed by Norwest Venture Partners, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), SingTel Innov8 of the SingTel Group, and an undisclosed global bank, Bitglass reportedly received additional $25 million in Series B funding. Norwest and NEA were also among its investors in the earlier round, where it got $10 million. The company plans to use the new investment to expand sales, marketing and technology development.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Transatomic Power Corporation has just received $2 million from FF Science, part of Founders Fund's $1 billion investment pool targeted at science and engineering-based companies.
Seattle-based Juno Therapeutics announced it has closed Series B round of funding with $134 million. The new funding came from previous investors including ARCH Venture Partners, Alaska Permanent Fund, Bezos Expedition, the personal investment company of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Venrock. Also participating in Series B are 10 other mutual funds and healthcare-related funds that wish to remain anonymous.
Vectra Networks managed to raise additional $25 million in its Series C funding from existing investor Accel Partners and other investors, including AME Cloud Ventures, IA Ventures and Khosla Ventures participating in the round, Intel Capital and Juniper Networks, through its Junos Innovation Fund. The new investment will be used to boost sales, marketing efforts as well as engineering.
Metanautix has received $7 million in initial funding from Sequioa Capital, the Stanford University Endowment Fund and Shiva Shivakumar, a former VP of engineering at Google. The company plans to release its first product for general availability before the end of 2014. At present, there are half a dozen beta customers using the software, with the largest being Hewlett-Packard.
Seoul-based Spoqa has raised $3.9 million in Series B funding from Daesung Private Equity Group and Bokwang Investments, and plans to use the investment for expansion in Japan.
