Daily funding roundup - October 14, 2015

Area 1 Security raised $15M

• eMMs, Inc. secured over $2 million in company's Series-A round of funding from private South African individual investor to build the cyber data protection fortress, FortKnoxx. Patent pending, FortKnoxx Fortress Technology (FFT) product B2C: AdCrusher was built to restore a private and ad- and distraction-free PC experience in Q4 2015. After this September's successful seed round and now this closed Series-A round of funding, the one-year-old startup plans to grow organically by gaining trust and momentum with PC and laptop consumers this year and digital device users in early 2016. 
  
  
• Messaging and chat app Lookup has raised $2.5 million in Series-A funding from a round led by Vinod Khosla's Khosla Impact fund along with participation from Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Narayana Murthy's Catamaran Ventures, Global Founders Capital, the European investment fund from Rocket Internet's Samwer brothers and others.  Lookup plans to use the newly raised funds to expand its merchant base and to branch out into newer geographies. 
  
  
• Zugata, a Palo Alto, CA-based Big Data platform for employees to receive feedback from the people they work with, along with mentor recommendations, received $3.2 million in seed funding. Backers included General Catalyst, Formation 8, Redpoint Ventures and Silicon Valley angel investors. The company will use the funds to continue to expand operations.
  
  
• Zwipe, which launched the fingerprint authenticated payment card on 17 October last year, today announced that it has raised $5 million in equity from Photon Future Ltd. The series B investment enables Zwipe to accelerate the commercialization of its biometric authentication technology and to finance further research and development activities.
  
  
• Pharma giant Pfizer has invested $10 million in the Israeli bio-medical company Protalix Biotherapeutics in exchange for a six percent share in the Karmiel-based company. Protalix has also given Pfizer full commercial rights to the Gaucher disease treatment Elelyso in all countries except Brazil in exchange for $36 million cash. Since the companies’ first strategic agreement six years ago, Protalix has replaced its management and changed its business strategy, now lead by new CEO Moshe Manor. The company was founded in 1993 by biochemist Yoseph Shaaltiel, who developed the principle plant-based enzyme used in Elelyso.
  
  
• Bluesmart, a San Francisco, CA-based developer of a smart, connected luggage, raised $11.5 million in funding. Backers included Amadeus IT Group, Cota Capital, Western Technology Investments (WTI), Fairheaven Capital, Fenox Ventures, FundersClub, PejmanMar Ventures, Yunqui Partners, Y Combinator, Flight VC’s Gil Penchina, YC’s partner Michael Seibel, MercadoLibre’s ($MELI) founder Marcos Galperin, Haystack’s Semil Shah and others. The company intends to use the funds to enter the market, accelerate production, invest in research and development, and finance branding initiatives.
  
  
• Area 1 Security, a cybersecurity company dedicated to eliminating targeted phishing and malicious social engineering attacks, today announced it has raised $15 million in a Series B funding round in recognition of significant product and customer momentum. The latest round brings Area 1 Security’s total funding amount to $25.5 million and is led by Joe Horowitz at Icon Ventures and Ted Schlein at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB).
  
  
• Quri today announced it has secured $17 million in Series C funding to increase technology development and accelerate sales and service expansion across the U.S. The new investment will help Quri rapidly expand in several U.S. markets – including New York City, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Los Angeles – to scale the successful 2014 launch of Quri's Retail Intelligence Platform. The company has raised $30 million to date, and equips consumer brands with unprecedented visibility and insights into their retail execution performance.
  
  
• Minoryx Therapeutics, a Mataró, Barcelona, Spain-based drug development company specialized in the discovery of new drugs for orphan diseases, completed a €19.4 million ($22.1 million) Series A funding round. The round was led by Ysios Capital, with participation from new investors Kurma Partners, Roche Venture Fund, Idinvest Partners and Chiesi Ventures and existing investors Caixa Capital Risc and HealthEquity. The company intends to use the funds to complete the team, especially in R&D, to move lead project MIN-102 to clinical validation in X-ALD, a rare neurodegenerative and life-threatening disease, and to further develop a pipeline of non-competitive pharmacological chaperones identified through its innovative proprietary platform, SEE-Tx.
  
  
• Bracket Computing, a startup with software that companies can use to securely run their applications and store data on public cloud infrastructure, is announcing today a $46.4 million round of funding. New investors Fidelity Management and Research Co. and Goldman Sachs are participating in the round. Plans call for hiring of additional software engineers and for further product development. Bracket currently supports Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform support is in beta. Up next: on-premises data center infrastructure.
  
  
• Bit9 Inc., a Waltham cybersecurity firm, has raised $54.5 million in its biggest funding round to date. Several major venture investors took part in the company’s series F funding round, including the Boston firms .406 Ventures, Accomplice, and Highland Capital Partners and the Silicon Valley firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital. Two new companies, Founders Circle and Evolution Equity Partners, also took part in the round. The company said the latest round boosted its total funds raised to $175 million.
  
  
• 23andMe has raised a substantial $115 million in funding, in a series E round led by Fidelity Management and Research Company, with participation from new investors Casdin Capital, WuXi Healthcare Ventures and Xfund, as well as existing investors such as Google Ventures. The personal genomics and biotechnology company was founded in 2006 by Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki, wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The new funds will be used to expand its operations and maximize the potential of its direct-to-consumer product in the U.S. and abroad.
  
  
• Kabbage, Inc., a technology and data platform powering automated lending, announced a $135 million equity raise led by Reverence Capital Partners as well as ING, Santander InnoVentures, and Scotiabank. Additional new investors include China’s Yuan Capital and Japan’s Recruit Strategic Partners, and existing investors BlueRun Ventures, UPS Strategic Enterprise Fund, and Thomvest Ventures also participated. The round brings the company’s total equity raised to date to over $240 million. Kabbage also announced a threefold expansion of its credit facility to more than $900 million.

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