Mark Boslet
Cisco Systems said it would acquire privately held Meraki Inc., a San Francisco cloud networking startup with investors including Sequoia Capital, Google and DAG Ventures. Cisco will pay about $1.2 billion in cash and retention-based incentives. Meraki’s offerings will expand Cisco’s product portfolio in the midmarket.
SecondMarket’s real long-term value may finally be emerging as a private company stock buy-back site. This seems to be the conclusion of the company’s third-quarter transaction report, issued earlier this month.
New Enterprise Associates, Inc. said Dayna Grayson joined the firm as partner. She will work with NEA’s East Coast technology team and focus on early-stage enterprise and consumer Internet investments. Grayson was previously at North Bridge Venture Partners in Boston where she made seed and early-stage consumer Internet and software-as-a-service investments.
TriNet said it closed its acquisition of Strategic Outsourcing Inc. from Clarion Capital Partners. The acquisition was announced in September. No financial terms were released.
Greenspring Associates said it closed Greenspring Global Partners V, L.P., a $356 million global venture capital fund-of-funds. The fund found strong participation from existing investors and added a select number of new institutional investors.
DFJ Esprit said it has sold its French portfolio company EVE and its line of ZeBu hardware-assisted verification products to Synopsys. The exit is the firm's fifteen since January 2010, which together have a combined value of more than $2.1 billion. DFJ Esprit added in a press release that since July 2011 it has invested in 10 new companies and 20 follow-on rounds.
Dollars raised by venture capital firms fell 17% in the third quarter, but more funds were able to find new money. In the three month period, 53 U.S.-based venture funds raised $4.98 billion, according to Thomson Reuters, publisher of this blog, and the National Venture Capital Association. In the second quarter, 43 funds raise $5.97 billion.
Intel Capital said Tuesday it invested about $40 million in 10 startups, including Box, Hungama.com and Jelli. The announcement was made at the organization's two-day Global Summit in California. The focus of the companies varies from cloud collaboration and digital entertainment to mobile payments and device interaction. Along with Box, the new portfolio companies include LIFO Interactive, NewAer, PagPop, Tier 3, Transmension, FocalTech and UUCun. Individual deal details were not disclosed.
NestGSV, Inc. said it launched its nestGSV startup accelerator in Redwood City, Calif. The accelerator's initial focus will be ed tech; health and bio tech; cloud, SAAS and big data; mobile and wireless; software; eCommerce; ePay; gaming and social; and cleantech.
Biophytis said it raised $2.6 million in a B round. Metabrain Research, a spinoff of Merck Serono, joined existing investors Seventure partners and CM-CIC Capital Prive in the financing.