The VC firm Andreessen Horowitz has raised $650 million for a fund. The fund will focus solely on computer science, and be blind to company stage. The investments will range between $50,000 to $100 million, depending on the organization and their needs. This the second fund the firm has raised in the last two years.
Apple is increasing the length of song samples on iTunes. The samples will be tripled from the current 30 seconds, to 90 seconds. This will apply, only to a full-length song that is not shorter than two minutes and 30 seconds in total. Music industry partners were informed via letter on Tuesday.
BringIt has raised $1.5 million in funding. The round was led by Blumberg Capital, Seraph Group and Ergo Media. This raises the total that the company has raised to $2.8 million. BringIt is based in San Francisco based game monetization start up.
Cloud Sherpas has raised $1.6 million. This was the company’s first round of funding.The round was led by Syncarpha Capital, Vento Security Holdings and Hallett Capital. The company, which helps to migrate enterprise apps to the cloud, is currently based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Urban Airship raised $5.4 million. This was the second round of funding. The round was led by Foundry Group. Other investors include True Ventures and the Founders Co-op. Urban Airship provides back end support to mobile game companies.
Google is going to set aside $8.5 million to start a privacy fund. The fund will pay for lawyer expenses and funding for privacy education nonprofits. This is being done because of the privacy lawsuit over Google Buzz. The company is expected to announce the fund today. The funds represent 1/1000th of their quarterly revenues.
Dell announced that they are buying Boomi. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Boomi is a Software-as-a-Service integration company. They are based in Berwyn, Pennsylvania.
LiveU, which maarkets live video on wireless network tools, raised $11 million in a Series C round of funding, led by Pitango Venture Capital. Other investors include Carmel Ventures and Canaan Partners.
Rocket Fuel launched a holiday ad service, called Holiday Shopping Booster, which is designed to to help marketers target shoppers, and make their marketing based on purchasing trends. Some of their current customers include Virgin Moble, Blackberry, Sprint, BMW, Bing, Coca Cola, The New York Times, ABC, and more.
Electronic Arts signed a five-year deal with Facebook. The deal sets up the exclusive use of Facebook Credits in games developed by EA or its subsidiary companies. Electronic Arts, for those of you who are not familiar, is a game company.
