News Briefs, Oct. 26, 2006

It’s Obvious, Odeo overOdeo, a San Francisco-based podcasting startup has called it quits. The company, co-founded by Pyra Labs blogger Evan Williams, has completed a management buyout and has returned millions of dollars in funding to venture and angel investors Charles River Ventures, Mitch Capor, Josh Kopelman and Ron Conway. The amount of money that Odeo raised is undisclosed.

Williams, Biz Stone and other Odeo employees have started a new company called Obvious Corp., which will continue to operate Odeo and Twitter.com, an additional startup that Williams had been testing out of his San Francisco offices over the past year.

In his blog last week (evhead.com) Williams offers little insight as to what Obvious is, other than to say that Obvious is the company he “wanted to start for a very long time—before Odeo and even at the beginning of Pyra Labs.”

Cleantech cleans up again

North American venture capital investing in the cleantech category realized its ninth consecutive quarter of growth with a record $933 million invested in Q3, according to the Cleantech Venture Network.

In comparison, venture investors pumped more than $425 million into the general sector in the same quarter of 2005 and more than $843 million in Q2 3006. The energy segment led the way with $837 million, a 41% increase over the $594 million invested in Q2 2006.

Year-to-date cleantech investments totaled $2.29 billion, double the $1.1 billion invested in the first three quarters of 2005. —PE Week staff