VENTURE CAPITAL POST

After years of putting young firms at the backseat, more corporations are now financing early stage startups in the technology space through accelerator programs, TechCrunch reported.

Google Ventures general partner Rich Miner will join the board of directors of San Francisco, US-based mobile app performance management (mAPM) firm Crittercism to replace Wesley Chan, who left Google Ventures to establish his own company.

Cybersecurity startup ThreatStream has secured $4 million in a Series A funding round led by Google Ventures and participated in by Paladin Capital Group, Cloudera's Tom Reilley and Hugh Nijemanze of ArcSight, TechCrunch reported.

Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the biggest solar thermal power plant in the world, opened in the Mojave Desert on Thursday with the help of the technology provided by BrightSource Energy and the $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy.

A post on the official company blog of Uber said that they will be doing more thorough background checks of the drivers of its car riding service, TechCrunch reported.

San Francisco, California-based mobile video advertising startup Vungle snagged $17 million in a Series B funding round led by Thomvest Ventures to build monetization tools for developers of mobile apps.

Renowned technology innovators invested $5 million to close the latest funding round of San Francisco-based mobile technology firm Apportable, bringing to $7.4 million total funds raised to date.

The most active venture capital investor last year is 500 Startups with 57 new deals made and 77 total deals in all, data from DJX VentureSource revealed.

Blue Bottle Coffee was able to raise a $25.7 million investment in a financing round led by Morgan Stanley Investment Management, a source told TechCrunch.

In its first outside funding round, Medium, the blogging platform that Twitter co-founder Ev Williams established, raised $25 million from Greylock Partners and other investors.

Online legal startups like LegalForce, RocketLawyer and others intend to bring law closer to the people and make it less expensive in the process, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

Cambridge, England-based company Kensho closed a $10-million seed funding round for a cloud-based intelligent market research assistant called Warren that can answer complex financial queries in natural language.

Shape Security, a Mountain View, California-based secretive cybersecurity startup founded by former Pentagon employees, wants to slow down hackers using software that scrambles website codes.

Madrid, Spain-based Wi-Fi sharing company Fon nabbed $14 from broadband chip maker Qualcomm Ventures to develop a new device that enables users to share music and broadband signals.

A report on new digital news site Re/Code quoted sources, who said the current massive fundraising of home gadget startup Nest could put its valuation to over $2 billion.