Jonathan Marino

Berlin-based startup 6Wunderkinder received backing from investor T-Venture, the VC arm of Deutsche Telekom, to foster its international expansion. This additional funding comes just six months after the Berlin-based company raised €500,000 from the High-Tech Gründerfonds. Thomas Grota, Senior Investment Manager of T-Venture, worked on the transaction for the investor.

Got Our E-Mails? Get our e-mails (totally free) Trading Up: So, now who’s buying into Facebook? Gearing up for a Run? Will Chris Christie, or won’t he, in Iowa? They Can’t Lay Off: Investors are all over the new IPOs (but you knew that already)

It’s safe to say all those ancillary add-on Twitter photo apps will not be enjoying the “Tweetdeck tweetment.” The mega micro-messaging company didn’t really need to buy Tweetdeck last month; but the $40 million-$50 million Twitter spent acquiring the software application that organizes tweets allowed it to snap up engineering talent as the company’s own CTO was exiled and it bolted on technology it will likely need later. The Tweetdeck deal probably also....

Coming on the heels of the Tweetdeck deal, Twitter’s not done making buys yet. AdGrok announced on its corporate blog earlier today that the company will be acquired and integrated into Twitter’s revenue engineering team. Specifics on the deal were not publicized.

Minno is Minno no more. The online payments company raised $700,000 in the form of a seed round from investors including GRP Partners and Farhad Mohit, the Shopzilla founder, and is rebranding itself as well. According to its blog posting, Minno will rebrand as BuySimple. Specifics on the funding or personnel moves were not made public.

MobileIron, the enterprise management and security system for mobile devices and related apps, has landed a $20 million Series D growth financing round. All of the company’s current investors, including Foundation Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital and Storm Ventures, participated in the round.

Early-stage industrial biologics company Novophage completed a $5.7 million Series A round of financing. The round was led by Flybridge Capital Partners and included Chevron Technology Ventures, Founder Collective, The Kraft Group and Boston University. As part of the funding, Founder Collective's Micah Rosenbloom has joined the company as CEO.

Upsizing: airbnb raising mega-round at $1B valuation Looking Overseas: Greylock Partners launches tech fund in Europe, Israel Ranking ‘Em: The states most, and least, likely to produce the next crop of geniuses in the U.S. Jerks! Steve Martin duped in German art forgery scandal

That Was Fast: Google sued for trade secrets, as it opens up a new mobile pay biz Bing! No, not the search engine—the VC (who sits for an interview with Old Grey) Hey, Good Lookin’: High school shots of the current top crop of GOP presidential candidates Brother, Could You Spare a Few Bil? The argument for QE3

So, What About CalPERS’ Thousands of Other Employees? A fellow Jon, this one Ortiz of the Bee out West, weighs in Defending Steve Ballmer: 247wallst throws the Microsoft CEO a bone FrACK! Chevron investors are worried about the natural gas extraction business Freescalin’: The semiconductor co. prices at $18 a share