Private Equity Week Wire for Wednesday 10/18

? MINNEAPOLIS — St. Paul Venture Capital announced today that it has closed a $1.3 billion venture fund, one of the ten largest early stage venture funds in the history of the industry. The fund will concentrate its investments on early-stage companies in four sectors — communications, business Internet, consumer technology and health care — and in three primary geographical regions — New England, Minnesota and California. The addition of this new fund brings the firm’s total capital under management to $3.0 billion. St. Paul Venture Capital receives its capital exclusively from the St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company. The fund is the sixth in a series of venture capital funds established since 1988 by St. Paul Venture Capital. This relationship with the Fortune 100 company allows St. Paul Venture Capital the flexibility to invest with a high-growth orientation and without the pressure of short-term financial and fund-related considerations.

? BELLEVUE, WA — Glides Inc., the premier provider of multilingual Web content management solutions for mid-market companies, today announced the completion of its initial round of venture capital funding led by Timberline Venture Partners, a venture capital firm focused on early-stage IT funding, and PSINet Ventures Ltd., the wholly owned corporate ventures unit of PSINet Inc. The Series A Preferred financing totals $3.5 million. William R. Kallman, managing partner of Timberline Venture Partners, has also taken a seat on Glides’ board of directors.

? SARATOGA, CA — Clairvoyant Software, Inc., a privately held company providing the only solutions for service providers and large enterprises to precisely forecast service demand for customers, announced it has raised $10 million, in a second round of funding. Clairvoyant’s investors include InterWest Partners, AsiaTech Management, Artemis Ventures, and Novus Ventures.

? SANTA CLARA, CA — Alopa Networks Inc., a Silicon Valley startup company specializing in broadband subscriber solutions for the cable, DSL, and wireless industries, announced today that it received over $15 Million in its first institutional round of financing by two of the nation’s leading venture capital firms –Summit Accelerator Fund and Lucent Venture Partners. Summit Accelerator Fund leads the round with backing from Lucent Venture Partners and additional funding from Western Technology Investments.

? MIGDAL HAEMEK, ISRAEL — EZchip Technologies (a subsidiary of LanOptics Ltd., NASDAQ: LNOP), a 10/40 Gigabit network processor provider, today announced it has completed a second round of venture financing in which it will receive $22 million. The conclusion of this investment round completes an investment process begun in earlyJuly, when the leading investors of this round, prominent U.S. venture capital firms, agreed to a term sheet for this investment and assumed a pre money value of $100 million. EZchip’s early investors – LanOptics, Star Ventures, Apax Partners and Tamar Investments – also participated in this round of financing.

? SEATTLE & PORTLAND, OR — Timberline Venture Partners, a venture capital firm focused on early-stage information technology funding, today announced it had led a $3.5 million funding round for Glides Inc. of Bellevue, Washington. Timberline provided the majority of the Series A funding, which also included financing from PSINet Ventures Ltd., the wholly owned corporate ventures unit of PSINet Inc. of Ashburn, Virginia. William R. Kallman, Timberline’s managing partner, has joined Glides’ board of directors.

If you are interested in having your release run on Private Equity Week Wire, please send your release to Private Equity Wire for publication.