THE BUSINESS OF TECHNOLOGY
Pearson, the British education publisher, purchased a 5 percent stake in NOOK Media, the Barnes & Noble subsidiary that's behind the NOOK reader and its digital content store, for $89.5 million. "We formed NOOK Media to be a leader in the exploding market for digital content," said William Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & … [Read more...]
by Anam Alpenia, Red Herring The textbook chapter for quantum physics reads like a Philip K. Dick novel. Yet it is gradually evolving from beyond science fiction to actually providing practical industry applications. In short, trippy physics will soon be making a lot of people money. To that end, the Quantum Wave Fund, the first to specialize in … [Read more...]
Costanoa Venture Capital, the latest engagement from storied Sutter Hill Ventures investor Greg Sands, announced its recently raised $100 million fund together with its first 10 investments. The fund will focus on early stage startups with investments of $500,000 to $3 million, specifically targeting applied big data, social and mobile … [Read more...]
For Dafiti, the investment bell has been ringing like a cash register lately. The Zappos-like clone for Brazil and Latin America landed $45 million as recently as August. This week, the company upped the ante with a new $65 million round, bringing its total capital to a staggering $180 million. That's the fourth round the company has raised in the … [Read more...]
Lazada, the Asian Amazon clone, has raised $26 million to expand its ecommerce services across the continent, the Next Web reported. The investment led by Summit Partners is just one of the latest checks the company has landed in recent weeks. Less than a month ago, it received $40 million from Kinnevek, the Swedish retail conglomerate. Owned by … [Read more...]
by Igor Sill, Geneva Venture Partners Insights into the Mississippian Lime Opportunity The recent announcement from Paris-based International Energy Agency projects the US may become the world's largest oil producer by around 2020, overtaking Saudi Arabia, thanks to new technologies capable of extracting previously inaccessible oil reserves … [Read more...]
by Matt Gallagher, Red Herring journalist LightSail, an innovative Berkeley company that uses air compression, water droplets and some creative thermodynamics to store clean energy for the long term, has raised $37.3 million from none other than Bill Gates and Peter Thiel. One of the biggest drawbacks of clean energy is that it comes and goes … [Read more...]
Spotify has closed on a $100 million round that values the company at $3 billion, All Things D was the first to report. Coca-cola became a minority investor in the company, investing 10 percent of the round, according to the New York Times. Goldman Sachs contributed 50 percent, while another 15 percent came from Fidelity Investments. The … [Read more...]
Big Switch Networks has just landed $25 million to help it take on such giants as Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, and Juniper Networks in the network virtualization space. The round was led by Redpoint Ventures and joined by Goldman Sachs, and existing investors Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and others. It brings the company's total … [Read more...]
Netflix adopted a new “stockholder rights plan,” that protects the company's board from outside investors buying out enough shares to overpower the board and run the company outside of its “best interests.” Otherwise known as a “poison pill” plan, the preventative measure would kick in if an investor bought 10 percent, or in the case … [Read more...]