Jana, a provider of free, unrestricted internet access in emerging markets, has announced a $57 million Series C funding round led by Verizon Ventures. Existing investors Spark Capital and Publicis Groupe also participated. The company will use the funds to accelerate its expansion in emerging markets. Jana also announced AOL CEO Tim Armstrong will serve on the company’s advisory board. “I’m excited that Verizon Ventures has invested in a company that is seeking to transform access to the internet. By 2020, more than 5 billion people will be mobile, and new, engaging ways to access data will become increasingly important worldwide,” said Armstrong.
Aria Systems, a startup aiming to help enterprises grow recurring revenue, has raised $50 million in new capital. Existing investors Bain Capital Ventures, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, InterWest Partners, Venrock and VMware joined new investors Rembrandt Venture Partners, Madison Bay Capital Partners and Hercules Technology Growth Capital in the financing round. “We are thrilled with the surging enterprise market adoption of Aria and the strategic focus our customers have to improve their recurring revenue businesses,” said Tom Dibble, President & CEO, Aria Systems. “Our investment partners provide us with their extensive experience in enterprise cloud, along with capital to provide a truly enterprise-grade level of support and service to our global customers. We look forward to building upon our record-setting 2015 and to establishing successful long-term partnerships with a new wave of customers.”
GridGain Systems, a provider of software to improve real-time data access and processing, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Sberbank and Moneytime Ventures. Alamaz Capital and RTP Ventures also participated in the round. The company will use the funds to expand sales, marketing and R&D and for continued international growth. “This funding round reflects GridGain’s tremendous sales growth and solid execution during the past three years,” said Abe Kleinfeld, President and CEO of GridGain. “It also acknowledges the rapid market shift from traditional disk and flash-based storage to high-speed, high-scale in-memory computing architectures, and the emergence of the converged data platform. GridGain has averaged triple-digit annual sales growth during the past three years, recently expanded into Europe, and made successful inroads in financial services, tech and other verticals. This funding will enable us to accelerate our momentum and extend our market leadership.”
Synlogic, a biopharmaceutical company, has closed a $40 million Series B investment round. OrbiMed HealthCare Fund Management led the financing, which brings the company’s total investment to $70 million. Deerfield Management Company and founding investors Atlas Venture and New Enterprise Associates (NEA) also participated in the round. “We are very pleased with the strong interest in this financing round from leading life science investors,” said Dr. Jose Carlos Gutiérrez-Ramos, CEO of Synlogic. “The additional funds will support the development efforts of our two lead inborn errors of metabolism programs, UCD and PKU, which we plan to advance to the clinic in early 2017, as well as expand our pipeline of Synthetic Biotics across multiple therapeutic areas. This financing together with our recently announced partnership with AbbVie for the treatment of inflammatory bowel diseases, positions Synlogic well to realize the transformative potential of this new class of medicines.”