Series B
Marketing and advertising company Crowdtap has raised $5 million in a Series B funding round led by Foundry Group. Existing investors, Tribeca Venture Partners, Alta Communications and The Mustang Group also invested. The profitable New York company has seen monthly recurring revenue spike more than 300 percent last year. Total backing behind Crowdtap, whose funding accompanies the launch of new offices in Chicago and Los Angeles, comes to $15 million.
Nokia Growth Partners has led a $10 million Series B funding in online food-ordering platform meican.com. Series A investor Kleiner Perkins contributed. The Chinese company achieves monthly operating revenues of 1 million yuan. China’s O2O (online to offline) market was forecasted by industry analysts to swell to 418 billion yuan (roughly $67 billion) by 2015, according to Global Brand Insights in 2013.
Gigwalk has realized a $10 million Series B funding led by Nokia Growth Partners. The round saw participation from new backer Randstad Holding nv and current investors Harrison Metal, SoftTech, and August Capital. The San Francisco software platform now has more than half a million “Gigwalkers” — mobile-enabled independent contractors, according to a press release.
Funding
Prime Health Services, which delivers medical cost containment services, has gained $8 million of senior secured debt from LongVue Capital. The Brentwood, Tennessee-based company principally serves clients including insurance companies, self-insured employers and third party administrators, according to a press release.
The WSJ is reporting that Elon Musk, Ashton Kutcher and Mark Zuckerberg are participating in a $40 million funding for Vicarious FPC led by Formation 8. The company is “developing machine learning software based on the computational principles of the human brain,” according to its website. Vicarious lists Founders Fund, Felicis Ventures, Zarco Investment Group, Good Ventures LLC, Quora co-founder Adam D’Angelo, Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and Skype founding engineer Jaan Tallinn as investors.
M&A
According to TechCrunch, New York City media company XO Group Inc., whose products include The Knot and The Bump, has picked up New York-based Gojee, which gathers recipes for users. No deal terms were reported; Gojee had previously secured $4 million in funding from backers InterWest Partners and Kapoor Capital.
Denver health optimization company Welltok has revealed its acquisition of health application company Mindbloom out of Seattle, according to a press release. Mindbloom leverages products such as Life Game. Welltok gained $22.1 million in Series C funding this February.
Russian Internet titan Mail.Ru Group has agreed to buy Bullion Development Limited, “the beneficial owner of 11.99 percent of VK.com Limited,” according to Mail.Ru. If the deal closes, the Group will take a majority share, 51.99 percent, of VK. On its website, VK claims to be Europe’s biggest social network with upwards of 100 million active users.