Private Equity Week Wire for Monday 10/15

ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA — Following target=new>Israel?s lead, the Australian Government today announced a major new program to attract international private equity. The Australian Government’s new rules will introduce tax concessions for international investors including endowment funds and venture capital fund-of-funds vehicles, making it more attractive for them to allocate a portion of their funds to Australian venture capital partnerships. The rules will treat these investors in the same way as pension funds, exempting them from capital gains tax on their investments in Australia.

PALO ALTO, CA — Danger, Inc., creator of thehiptop mobile service and device, today announced it has secured $36 millionin second round financing from leading venture capital firms and strategiccorporate investors. This latest round brings the company’s total funding to$48 million. The round was led by Redpoint Ventures and also includedT-Venture, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom, Orange Ventures, theventure arm of Orange S.A, InOvate Communications Group and DiamondheadVentures. Also participating is Danger’s Series A lead investor, SBVC(Softbank Venture Capital). As part of this announcement, Jeff Brody, foundingpartner of Redpoint Ventures joins Greg Galanos, managing director at SBVC,and Danger founders Andy Rubin, Joe Britt and Matt Hershenson on the company’sBoard of Directors.

CAMPBELL, CA — iUniverse, the leading provider of publishing technology solutions, today announced that it has secured an additional $18 million in venture capital funding from Warburg Pincus. iUniverse plans to use the proceeds from this strategic financing round to expand its footprint in the market and increase capacity to meet the growing demand from individual authors, companies and publishers.

DENVER — Virtela Communications Inc., a global managed virtual private network (VPN) services and solutions provider, today announced the closure of its second round of funding for $35 million, bringing its total funding to date to $75 million. The funds are being used to expand the company’s sales and marketing forces worldwide to accelerate enterprise adoption of Virtela’s complete suite of secure, Internet-based private networking services. Today also marks the official launch of the company and its complete suite of managed IP VPN services.

Leading the round is seed investor Norwest Venture Partners, newly joined by New Enterprise Associates, Palomar Ventures, RSA Ventures (a venture capital fund sponsored and managed by RSA Security Inc.), Symantec Corp., Juniper Networks, Newton Technology Partners and North Coast Technology Investors.
NORTH ANDOVER, MA — Global Communication Devices (GCD), a fabless supplier of highly integrated semiconductor devices for wireless networking applications, today announced the close of $15.6 million in Series B funding to finance significant expansion, including a move to new headquarters in North Andover, Massachusetts. The funds will also be used to conclude development and initiate production of the company’s general-purpose highly integrated transceiver chips for local area, wide area, and personal area networks. GCD is positioned to be a leader in RF designs with state of the art delta-sigma data conversion technology. Initial products support IEEE 802.11a, b, and g standards as well as Bluetooth and HomeRF.
NEW YORK — International Tech & Telecom Ventures Inc. announces its formal launch. The company will operate under the assumed name of ITTV and will be headquartered in New York City. ITTV is a corporate development services firm that works on behalf of its international tech & telecom clients to help them establish, create and operate successful businesses in the United States. ITTV will target tech & telecom SMEs (Small & Medium Size Enterprises) and Venture Capital firms and their portfolio companies.

CAMPBELL, CA — IP Dynamics, developer of a new breed of Virtual Private Networks (VPN), Monday announced the completion of its series C funding of $15 million led by Intel Capital; with several participants including Intel Capital, SUNeVision Ventures LLC; Technology Associates Management Co. (TAMC); and private investors Patrick Gelsinger, CTO, Intel Corp.; David Sun, co-founder of Kingston Technology; and Dong Kwan Kim, president of DaeHong Corp., Korea.

SANTA CLARA, CA — Silicon Valley Bank,a wholly owned subsidiary of Silicon Valley Bancshares, today announcedthe issuance of $3.2 million in equipment financing to VpacketCommunications, a closely held Silicon Valley company delivering the powerof converged voice/data solutions. Vpacket will use the financing toupgrade and expand office support functions as it completes the deploymentof its 6100 series voice/data router products, the first to deliver tollquality voice over IP (VoIP) to the enterprise.

BURLINGAME, CA — Wily Technology, the leader in Java Web Application Management, today announced the appointment of Dick Williams as president and CEO and David Strohm of Greylock Management as chairman of the board. Further, the company announced the completion of a $10 million round of financing from Accel Partners and Greylock Management.