Series A
Foreign exchange firm Kantox has raised €6.5 million ($8.9 million) in a Series A funding round led by Partech Ventures and Idinvest Partners. Cabiedes & Partners participated in the investment. Prior to this funding, the London-based company had raised €1 million in seed funding in 2012. Kantox, which enables P2P trading in more than 25 currencies, anticipates that its portal will see more than €1 billion in transactions in 2014.
Series B
Flash-sales platform SportPursuit has gained £5 million ($8 million) in Series B funding. DFJ Esprit led the investment while Silicon Valley Bank participated along with angels. Total backing behind the U.K.-based company reportedly comes to about £6.4 million.
San Francisco-based Splice Machine, which according to a press release provides the “only transactional real-time SQL-on-Hadoop database for Big Data applications,” has secured $15 million in a Series B funding round from InterWest Partners and Mohr Davidow Ventures. The latter investor raised $4 million in a Series A round for Splice Machine in 2012. The company will deploy a “public beta offering” in the first quarter of this year.
Funding
Time Warner Investments has led a $5 million funding round for advertising company iSocket. Conde Nast, R&R Venture Partners and individual investor Vivi Nevo contributed. The San Francisco-based company, which offers sales automation and programmatic direct solutions, has also debuted iSocket For Advertisers. An iSocket blog post claims directly sold digital media drew a spend of $14 billion this past year.
Series C
PlaceIQ has received $15 million in a Series C funding led by Harmony Partners. Iris Capital and previous backers from PlaceIQ’s Series B contributed. The New York-based venture, which help customers find and engage mobile audiences, raised $6.75 million in a Series B funding round from U.S. Venture Partners (which led), IA Ventures, kbs+ Ventures, Valhalla Partners and angels. The company accelerated into the red in 2013 and had revenue grow eightfold.
M&A
Open Road Integrated Media has bought E-Reads in a move that brings together the oldest independent ebook publisher and the biggest, according to a press release. Both companies are based in New York and operate in the digital publishing space. The companies offer 4,000+ and 1,200+ titles respectively .
Bonn-based Deutsche Telekom is picking up what it doesn’t already own of T-Mobile Czech Republic. The telco pays €0.8 billion ($1.1 billion) for the outstanding 39.23 percent stake from “a consortium of investors led by funds managed or advised by private equity group Mid Europa Partners,” according to a release.