Series B
Demand-side platform The Trade Desk has secured $20 million in a Series B investment. Hermes Growth Partners led the round and IA Ventures contributed. Ventura, CA-based The Trade Desk has established offices in Singapore, Sydney and Hamburg in the last year and will head further into Asia Pacific, Europe, Northern Asia and Australia. The spend on worldwide advertising comes to almost $600 billion per year, with the real-time bidding market at $4 billion.
Palo Alto-based Piazza, the “social learning platform,” has debuted Piazza Careers and revealed a Series B investment. The company has raised $8 million in funding round led by Khosla Ventures. Bessemer Venture Partners, Piazza’s Series A lead investor, contributed as well. Its new platform helps connect students with companies like Palantir, SpaceX and Yelp.
Series C
d.light, provider of solar lighting and power products, has raised $11 million in a Series C funding round. DFJ, Nexus India Capital, Acumen Fund, Gray Ghost Ventures, Omidyar Network, and Garage Technology Ventures were among the investors that participated in the round. Total backing behind the San Francisco company now comes to $40 million in capital. This past year, d.light has sold 6 million power and solar light products, according to a press release.
Norwest Venture Partners has led a $40 million Series C funding round for Shape Security. Sierra Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Venrock, Allegis Capital, Google Ventures and TomorrowVentures contributed. The Mountain View company emerged from stealth last month with its ShapeShifter product, which safeguards businesses from cyber attacks. Total backing now comes to $66 million, as this most recent round adds to the $26 million received by the company in Series A and B.
Funding
Cheetah Medical, founded in Tel Aviv and headquartered in Boston, has realized a $9 million investment. Fletcher Spaght Ventures led the funding, which saw participation from MVM Life Science Partners, Ascension Health Ventures, Robert Bosch Venture Capital and Springfield Investment Management. The company leverages a non-invasive way to “measure key hemodynamic parameters,” according to a press release.
Calgary-based oil and gas monitoring company Hifi Engineering has gained $5.4 million in funding. Enbridge Inc. and Cenovus Energy invested. The company’s tech is in more than 500 wells in North America. Its customers include Shell, Halliburton and GE.
San Francisco ad platform AdStage has raised $1 million in fresh seed investment from Digital Garage, a backer of Twitter. In total the company has secured more than $2.5 million from investors including Quest VP, Dave McClure/500 Startups, XG Ventures, Freestyle Capital, and others. “AdStage has over $500,000 of daily budgeted ad spend between 8,600 active campaigns across all Google, Facebook, Bing & LinkedIn, along with over $9 million in indexed ad spend from the past four weeks alone,” according to a company press release.
M&A
Santa Clara entertainment tech company Rovi Corporation is snapping up Andover-based Veveo, Inc., a “leading provider of semantic technologies to bridge the usability gap in connected applications with intelligent search, discovery and personalization solutions.” When the deal closes, Rovi will provide about $62 million in net cash, as well as up to $7 million in further cash payments pending the attainment of landmarks.
Redwood Shores, CA-based Oracle has said it will acquire big data and marketing company BlueKai. The Cupertino company offers a cloud-based big data platform that facilitates companies’ customization of offline, online and mobile marketing campaigns with insights about the audience. Terms of the deal went undisclosed, but reports estimate the acquisition could run Oracle roughly $400 million.
San Francisco-based CloudFlare has picked up Burlingame, CA malware spotter StopTheHacker. CloudFlare “protects and accelerates any website online,” according to its website. No financial terms were disclosed.
Greensboro, North Carolina RF Micro Devices, Inc. (RFMD) is merging with TriQuint Semiconductor, Inc. of Hillsboro, Oregon. Both provide radio frequency solutions, according to a press release. The deal is made up entirely of stock and builds a new enterprise with revenues exceeding $2 billion. RFMD reportedly pays about $1.6 billion for TriQuint. “The combination is expected to achieve at least $150 million in cost synergies,” according to a company press release.