Series A
Wireless power company uBeam has completed a $10 million Series A round of financing, led by Upfront Ventures. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Mark Cuban and Ludlow Ventures also participated. The company, which builds products that can charge devices wirelessly from distance, will use the new funds to expand its team and accelerate product development. “uBeam’s wireless power technology can charge devices at great distances, while remaining safe, cost-effective and compact,” said Meredith Perry, founder and CEO, uBeam in a press release. “We will start with mobile phones, but the potential is limitless – everything from hearing aids to wearables, laptops or flat screen TVs. uBeam literally has the power to untether the physical devices that have become indispensable to our daily lives.”
Series B
Instant messaging app Jongla, a former Red Herring Top 100 winner, has closed a €3.4 million ($4.2 million) round of investment from private investors including JSH Capital Oy, Ingman Finance Oy, Kontino Invest Oy and Holdington Ltd Oy. The copany will use the latest funds to scale the business globally and grow its team. “Jongla has always prided itself on creating a fun and unique way of communicating with loved ones. In the past this has been achieved with the inclusion of a variety of rich communication features targeted towards the youth market,” said Riku Salminen, CEO, Jongla. “The latest funding round will allow us to continue to develop and extend our cross-platform social messaging service as a platform and firmly place ourselves as a preferred choice in a number of key markets around the world.”
Series E
Joyent, a container infrastructure company, has raised $15 million in Series E funding from Intel Capital, Orascom TMT Investments, El Dorado Ventures, EPIC Ventures, LGI Ventures and others. The company will use the funds to accelerate the adoption of its application containers in the enterprise. “From the beginning Joyent set out to solve some of the biggest problems in cloud computing through the lens of the developer. Their solutions aren’t iterative; they are built from the start specifically to address the biggest pain points of today’s developers. Containers will transform the data center, but they’ll also completely change the way developers work,” said Charles Beeler, partner at El Dorado Ventures in a statement.
Funding
Enterprise communication tool Slack has raised $120 million at a post-funding valuation of $1.12 billion. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google Ventures led the investment into the company, which only launched its platform to the public eight months ago. Slack previously raised $43 million six months ago and investors from that round such as A16Z, Accel Partners and The Social+Capital Partnership also participated in the latest funding. The company, co-founded by Stewart Butterfield, who co-founded Flickr previously, has experienced extraordinary growth over a short amount of time. Slack now has over 30,000 active teams sending over 200 million messages each month, and brings in $1 million a month in recurring revenues, according to the company. “As the leader of a brand new product category, we have a huge advantage right now. These next 6 to 18 months are going to be critical for growth and this funding round gives us unlimited flexibility to ensure that Slack’s momentum will continue to pick up steam.” said Butterfield in a statement.