Series A
Payward, Inc.’s Kraken division — an exchange for digital currencies such as Dogecoin and Bitcoin — has received $5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Hummingbird Ventures. Among its other backers: Barry Silbert’s Bitcoin Opportunity Fund and angel Trace Mayer. Kraken provides an intersection point for foreign exchange markets and Bitcoin, according to a press release. Payward is based in San Francisco.
Seattle-based Indix, which leverages a SaaS and big data product intelligence platform, has realized $8.5 million of a $9 million Series A-1 investment round, according to a press release. Nexus Venture Partners and Avalon Ventures co-led the funding. Total backing behind Indix now comes to $14.4 million, with $1.4 million raised from seed financiers and $4.5 million in Series A.
Series B
San Diego biotech RuiYi, Inc. has raised $15 million in a Series B funding round from current investors. Versant Ventures, 5AM Ventures, SR One, Apposite Capital, Merck Serono Ventures, Aravis SA, the independent corporate healthcare VC fund of GlaxoSmithKline and the strategic corporate venture fund of Merck Serono were the backers involved. Funding will go towards “continued development of RuiYi’s lead asset…and the discovery and development of new therapeutic monoclonal antibodies targeting G protein coupled receptors,” according to a press release.
Series E
Security company ThreatMetrix has gained $20 million in a Series E round led by Adams Street Partners. All of the San Jose-based company’s current institutional investors contributed to the funding. According to a press release, for the yearlong period ending in September of last year, investors pumped upwards of $1.4 billion into the cyber security space.
Funding
San Diego-based OneRoof Energy has secured upwards of $31.5 million in equity funding, according to an SEC filing. Investors were not disclosed, though they totaled five in number. According to its website, the “solar finance provider” is funded by Morgan Stanley Inc., Black Coral Capital Altenergy, and Hanwha Group.
London’s FTBpro has completed an $18 million funding round. Investors included Dawn Capital, Battery Ventures, Gemini Israel Ventures and a “major Asia-based media investor,” according to a press release. FTBpro claims to be online football’s biggest fan-generated media platform, according to its website. Total backing behind the company comes to $24 million.
M&A
Yahoo Japan Corporation has resolved to buy a 99.68 percent of shares in Tokyo’s telecom company eAccess Ltd. The Tokyo-based corporation will purchase the shares from SoftBank Corp. at a cost of ¥324 billion ($3.2 billion). The shares snap-up is contingent on eAccess’s scheduled merger with WILLCOM, effective June 1st of this year, according to a press release.
Klout, which scores your online influence, has officially been acquired by social software company Lithium Technologies. The San Francisco companies will serve an audience of more than 500 million consumers. Fortune puts the deal at almost $200 million.
Beverly Hills media company Collective Digital Studio has gained an investment from Unterföhring, Germany-based ProSiebenSat.1, a major European media company. ProSiebanSat.1 will take a minority stake in Collective Digital Studio, which is “delivering 1 in 6 millennial video viewers per month,” according to its website.
The EQT Mid Market fund has agreed to purchase a majority, 57.5 percent, of StormGeo Holding AS’s outstanding shares, according to a press release. The seller is Reiten & Co. Bergen, Norway-based StormGeo delivers at-sea ops weather-based, software enabled decision support, the press release states. EQT is a Northern European private equity group.