Daily funding roundup - June 4, 2015

Nervana Systems secured $20.5M; Zopper raised $20M; S4M nabbed $8M

• Pie, a Singapore-headquartered enterprise messaging service for ‘normals’, raised an $1.2 million Series A round as it prepares to monetize its service. The freshly-baked funding was led by GREEN Ventures, the investment arm of the Japanese games maker which is particularly active in Southeast Asia. Existing investors Koh Boon Hwee, Wavemaker Partners, Dennis Goh, and YSS Capital’s Ivan Yeo — from the company’s $800,000 seed round — also participated.
  
  
• DailyMail.com invested $3 million in a content recommendation firm Taboola as the companies plan to develop advertising products together, including several that are geared toward improving the performance of sponsor-produced content.
  
  

• Zentera Systems, a provider of secure Cloud Overlay Network hybrid infrastructure, completed an $4.9 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by CDIB Venture Capital with participation by existing investors. CDIB is the investment arm of China Development Financial, which is the principal investment and full-service merchant banking group in Asia with approximately $20B in assets.
  
  
• French startup S4M (Solutions for Mobile) nabbed an $8 million Series A round of funding from Entrepreneurs Venture and Bpifrance digital fund to grow its mobile performance technologies globally. Until recently they were self funded and, they say, profitable since day one. It has an analytics and programmatic mobile demand platform which applies so-called ‘intelligent’ technology to proprietary big data.
  
  
• Bao Pinche, China’s taxi-hailing app, just raised an $8.3 million series A round of financing, led by Lead Edge Capital. Lead Edge Capital previously contributed to a series C round in France’s BlaBlaCar, a long-distance ridesharing network.
  
  

• Mobile photo editing app Picsart raised $15 million in new funding, which values the three-year-old startup at $250 million. Previous investor Sequoia is included in the round, but is not the lead investor. Picsart has flown relatively under the radar, but has quietly amassed 250 million downloads for its iOS and Android apps. The company reportedly is seeing 60 million monthly active users. It raised $10 million in funding from Sequoia Capital in late 2014.
  
  

• Mobile app-based hyper-local marketplace, Zopper raised an $20 million in a Series B funding round from Tiger Global and Nirvana Ventures Advisors. The funds raised will be utilized for expanding its services to 30 more cities across the country as well as to develop its technology base. The company is also planning to get more retailers on its platform.
  
  

• Mobile payment startup TabbedOut raised $21.5 million in what its chief executive said will be its final funding round before going public. TabbedOut is similar to E la Carte Inc., which has deals with Genghis Grill and Applebee’s; and Ziosk LLC, which has deals with Red Robin and Olive Garden, in seeking to make it faster and easier for people pay their bills at restaurants and bars.
  Investors included: Heartland Payment Systems, New Enterprise Associates, Raven Venture Partners, Morgan Creek Capital Management, Trellis Partners, and Angel Syndicate
  
  

• Nervana Systems, a startup building artificial intelligence systems that companies can use to make their applications smarter, secured an $20.5 million round of funding. Data Collective led the new round in Nervana. Allen & Co., AME Cloud Ventures, Andy Rubin’s Global Playground, the CME Group, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Fuel Capital, Lux Capital, and Omidyar Network also participated. To date Nervana has raised $24.4 million, including the $3.3 million round announced last August and the startup’s $600,000 seed round.
  
  
  
• Bolt Threads, a new company developing the next generation of high-performance textiles, announced its emergence from stealth and grabbed $32.3 million in Series B funding. Foundation Capital led the round, which included new investors Formation 8 and Founders Fund. Bolt Threads has raised a total of $40 million to fuel research and commercialization of its Engineered Silk technology.
  
  
• Focus Ventures Ltd. completed its non-brokered private placement financing of 20.0 million units at CAD$0.20 per unit, for gross proceeds of CAD$4.0 million. Focus Ventures provides expansion stage venture capital for software, communications, and semiconductor companies. They seek companies that have completed initial development of their product or service, that have demonstrated clear market acceptance, and are seeking additional capital to expand their sales and marketing efforts or to execute strategic acquisitions.
  
  

If interested in being included in our daily roundup, please submit your press release to mitos@vator.tv.

Image Source: liftoff.nz