Daily funding roundup - January 15, 2016

Mitos Suson · January 15, 2016 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/42b0

Huanxi invested $50M in Mubi; Taulia Inc.received $46M; Keyme secured $20M funding

  • The Wireless Registry, a San francisco, CA-based global registry for wireless names and identifiers, raised $1.7 million in funding. Backers included members of the founding teams of Neustar and Blackbird (sold to Raytheon), as well as American Family Ventures, New Atlantic Ventures, and Point Judith CapitalThe company intends to use the funds to continue building its team, scale its technology platform, and grow its customer base.

  • Data provider Social123 has raised $4.25 million in venture capitalSocial123 helps companies identify marketing and sales leads and keep their contact data up-to-date. The Series A was led by Vocap Investment Partners and included existing investors Ellis Capital and serial Internet Security Systems’ co-founder Tom Noonan. The capital will be invested in product development and sales and marketing.

  • Estimote, a beacon company whose small, wireless sensors and accompanying software provide indoor location technology to some of the largest retailers as well as 65 percent of the Fortune 100, has now closed on $10.7 million in Series A funding. The round will help the business scale to meet the needs of its current customer base, around half of which is retail, as well as fund R&D efforts related to what’s next. The new round was led by Javelin Venture Partners, and included new investors Homebrew, Box Group, Digital Garage, Commerce Ventures, and a group of strategic angel investors, including Josh McFarland, who just sold TellApart to Twitter. Existing investors from Estimote’s seed round also participated.

  • MiMedia Inc., a personal cloud for digital content, including photos, video, music and documents, has closed a $15 million Series C funding round led by some of the most distinguished global family offices, including Thorney Investment Group (Australia), Whitebarn Associates, R&R Venture Partners, as well as a strategic investment from Micromax InformaticsIndia's leading smartphone manufacturer. This round brings the total invested capital to date to $35 million. The new funding will enable MiMedia to accelerate growth, expand its management team and support its existing and launched global distribution partnerships with some of the world's largest tech, media and telecom companies.

  • KeyMe, a cloud-based locksmith that saves and duplicates nearly every type of key, today announced a $20 million Series B round of financing led by Comcast Ventures with additional participation from Battery Ventures, White Star Capital, 7-Ventures, the venture arm of 7-Eleven, Ravin Gandhi, Coinstar founder Jens Molbak and The Michael Polsky Family Office, among others. The investment will enable KeyMe to launch its next generation of kiosks in new markets nationwide, expand its proprietary technology to support even more sophisticated automotive transponder keys, scale kiosk production and expand its executive team.

  • Fugue (formerly known as Luminal), a Frederick, MD-based startup developing an operating system for cloud computing, raised $20 million in Series C financing roundThe round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with participation from previous investors Core CapitalThe company, which has raised total financing to $34m, also announced its rebranding to Fugue [few-g], which is the name of its cloud operating system.

  • PlaceIQ, a company building a new model of consumer behavior by connecting physical and digital activities across time, space and mobile devices, yesterday announced a $25 million Series D funding round and the addition of business leader George Bell to its Board of Directors. The funding will fuel further development of PlaceIQ's industry-leading, location-based audience platform, which currently provides consumer analytics and media targeting for the world's largest brands in retail, CPG, automotive, entertainment, travel and more. The funding will also further investment in the award-winning Place Visit Rate (PVR®), PlaceIQ's foot traffic measurement technology that provides granular data on consumer visitation across the entire purchase journey.

  • Taulia Inc., a financial supply chain company, today announced that it raised $46 million in Series E financing, led by London-based Zouk Capital. New strategic investors and institutional investors joined the round, which included all existing institutional investors. In additional news, Taulia named seasoned Silicon Valley financial executive John Varughese as CFO. "This additional investment allows Taulia to further accelerate its rapid expansion," said Cedric Bru, CEO of Taulia.  

  • Streaming service Mubi is set to launch in China after the company agreed a joint venture that will see it receive US$50 million investment from Hong Kong entertainment firm Huanxi MediaHuanxi will plough US$40 million into Mubi China for a 70% stake in the JV and is investing a further US$10 million for an 8% stake in Mubi itself, which offers movies via the web and mobile apps in more than 200 territories.

  • Jawbone has raised a new round of funding, bringing in $165 million from The Kuwait Investment Authority to fund its operations. The company also revealed that president Sameer Samat will be leaving to take another job at Google. However, he’ll remain associated with Jawbone both as an advisor and investor.  First reported by Re/code, Jawbone has since confirmed the new investment, with a company spokesperson telling VentureBeat that it’ll use to “fund operations and growth and bring new products to market.” Additionally, in an effort to retain its talent, Jawbone has also created a 30 percent equity pool for its current employees.

If you are interested in being included in our funding roundup, submit your press release or blog post about your financing round to mitos@vator.tv. 

Image source: snapmunk.com

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Mitos Suson

I produce Vator Events and enjoy the challenge. I am learning and growing a lot, being involved with Vator and loving every moment of it!

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