Week in deals, April 28, 2008

BIOTECH

ArGentis Pharmaceuticals

Memphis, Tenn.

www.argentisrx.com

Amount/Round: NA/NA

Investors: Innova Memphis Inc.

Details: Startup seeks to in-license therapies for chronic diseases.

BrainCells Inc.

San Diego

www.braincellsinc.com

Amount/Round: $20M/B

Investors: New Enterprise Associates (led), Alexandria Real Estate Equities, MedImmune Ventures, Bay City Capital, Oxford Bioscience Partners, Technology Partners, Pappas Ventures, NeuroVentures.

Details: Develops drugs targeting mood and anxiety disorders. The funding brings the Series B round to $50M. Chuck Newhall, general partner and co-founder of NEA, has joined the board.

Cambria Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Woburn, Mass.

www.cambriapharma.com

Amount/Round: $5.4M/A

Investors: Idec New Ventures, CommonAngels and individual investors.

Details: Develops treatments for neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.

Resolvyx Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Bedford, Mass.

www.resolvyx.com

Amount/Round: $25M/B

Investors: QVT Financial (led), Radius Ventures, Biogen Idec New Ventures, Atlas Venture, CHL Medical Partners, Flagship Ventures.

Details: Develops resolvin therapeutics to treat inflammatory diseases. The company has now raised about $40M since 2005. Keith Manchester, portfolio manager at QVT Financial, has joined the board.

Stromedix Inc.

Cambridge, Mass.

www.stromedix.com

Amount/Round: $25M/B

Investors: New Leaf Venture Partners (led), Bessemer Venture Partners, Red Abbey Venture Partners, Atlas Venture, Frazier Healthcare Ventures.

Details: Develops drugs to treat fibrotic organ failure. The company has now raised more than $30M since March 2007. Ron Hunt, managing director of New Leaf Venture Partners, and Chris Gabrieli, partner of Bessemer Venture Partners, have joined the board.

CHIPS

Audience Inc.

Mountain View, Calif.

www.audience.com

Amount/Round: $15M/C

Investors: New Enterprise Associates, Tallwood Venture Capital, Vulcan Capital, VentureTech Alliance.

Details: Develops sound processing semiconductor chips.

CLEANTECH

Enerpulse Inc.

Albuquerque

www.directhits.com

Amount/Round: $5M/B

Investors: Robeco (a unit of Rabobank Group).

Details: Develops environment friendly automobile spark plugs. The funding brings the total round to $10.5M following a $5.5M first close last year from Sail Venture Partners and Altira Group.

eSolar

Pasadena, Calif.

www.esolar.com

Amount/Round: $130M/NA

Investors: Idealab, Oak Investment Partners, Google.org.

Details: Develops solar thermal power plants.

Infinia Corp.

Kennewick, Wash.

www.infiniacorp.com

Amount/Round: $7M/B

Investors: Foxconn Technology Group.

Details: Develops solar power generation product that converts concentrated solar energy into electricity. The funding brings the Series B total to $57M. Earlier round participants included GLG Partners, Wexford Capital, Vulcan Capital, Khosla Ventures, EQUUS Total Return Inc., Idealab and Power Play Energy LLC.

COMMUNICATIONS

Vysr Inc.

Palo Alto, Calif.

www.vysr.com

Amount/Round: $2M/A

Investors: Sand Hill Group, VenturEast of India.

Details: Develops voice and text communication infrastructure.

CONSUMER INTERNET

GamerDNA Inc.

Cambridge, Mass.

www.gamerdna.com

Amount/Round: $3M/A

Investors: Flybridge Capital Partners.

Details: Operates a social networking site for online gamers. The company, f.k.a. GuildCafe, raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Flybridge last summer.

The Guild Inc.

Madison, Wis.

www.guild.com

Amount/Round: $2.5M/C

Investors: Dolphin Equity Partners.

Details: Operates an online art retail site. The company has now raised more than $50M in funding since 1999 from Benchmark Capital, Technology Crossover Ventures and San Francisco Equity Partners, among others.

Health Plan One

Shelton, Conn.

www.healthplanone.com

Amount/Round: $6.5M/A

Investors: Pequot Ventures (led), Greycroft Partners and individual investors Kevin Hill (former CEO for United Healthcare Northeast); Chan Wheeler (former CEO of Uniprise); and Bill Sullivan (former president of Oxford Health Plans).

Details: Operates an online marketplace for health insurance services. Larry Lenihan, co-head of Pequot Ventures, will join Chan Wheeler and Kevin Hill on the board.

MediaScrape

Montreal

www.mediascrape.com

Amount/Round: $3.2M/NA

Investors: NA

Details: Operates an online video news aggregator. The company says it previously raised $1M from an undisclosed investor.

Play Hard Sports Inc.

Foxboro, Mass.

www.playhard.net

Amount/Round: $5M/A

Investors: New Enterprise Associates.

Details: Operates a casual sports gaming network. The company is run by Jeffrey Anderson, who stepped down as CEO of gaming company Turbine Inc. last October. Harry Weller, a partner with NEA, has joined the company board.

PropertyMaps.com

Sarasota, Fla.

www.propertymaps.com

Amount/Round: NA/NA

Investors: Merrick Capital.

Details: Provides a real estate search engine.

Tiny Prints Inc.

Mountain View, Calif.

www.tinyprints.com

Amount/Round: NA/NA

Investors: Summit Partners, Technology Crossover Ventures.

Details: Operates an online retail site for stationery. The company, founded in 2004, said Summit Partners and TCV will receive board seats from their minority investments, but the partners were not named.

Travel Ad Network

New York

www.traveladnetwork.com

Amount/Round: $15M/A

Investors: Rho Ventures, Village Ventures and individual investors.

Details: Operates an online ad network for the travel industry.

TripIt

San Francisco

www.tripit.com

Amount/Round: $5.1M/B

Investors: Sabre Holdings, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, European Founders Fund.

Details: Provides an online travel organizer and social network. The company raised $1M in seed funding from O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures last year.

ECOMMERCE

Obopay

Redwood City, Calif.

www.obopay.com

Amount/Round: $20M/D

Investors: NA

Details: Provides mobile payment services in the United States. GigaOm first reported the news last week, including an item about how the company’s founders made their contributions via the Obopay platform. The company had previously raised about $44M from Richmond Management, Qualcomm, Redpoint Ventures, AllianceBernstein, Citi and Societe Generale.

EDUCATION

TeachStreet

Seattle

www.teachstreet.com

Amount/Round: $2.25M/A

Investors: Madrona Venture Group (led), Bezos Expeditions and individual investors, including current and former Amazon.com executives Jeff Blackburn, Michael George, Jason Kilar (currently CEO at Hulu.com), Kim Rachmeler and Joel Spiegel; Erik Blachford, former CEO of Expedia; John Musser, founder of ProgrammableWeb; and Dave Richards, former RealNetworks’ executive and co-founder of Athena IQ.

Details: Operates as an online marketplace for teaching and coaching services. The company was founded by Dave Schappell, a former director of product development at Amazon.

FINANCIAL

Business Financial Services Inc.

Raleigh, N.C.

www.businessfinancialservices.com

Amount/Round: $9M/NA

Investors: Edison Venture Fund.

Details: Provides cash advances to U.S. merchants.

HEALTH CARE

HealthEdge

Burlington, Mass.

www.healthedge.com

Amount/Round: $13M/NA

Investors: Psilos Group.

Details: Develops and markets software for the health care industry. The company has now raised more than $26M in funding from Psilos Group since 2006.

INTERNET

Buddy Media Inc.

New York

www.buddymedia.com

Amount/Round: $6.5M/B

Investors: Softbank Capital Partners (led), European Founders Fund, GreyCroft Partners and individual investor Ron Conway.

Details: Develops Facebook applications. The company also announced the launch of a social advertising network.

MARKETING

Channel M

Los Angeles

www.channelm.com

Amount/Round: NA/C

Investors: Intel Capital.

Details: Provides marketing and media services. The company previously raised $11M from Intel Capital, Ascend Venture Group and Vintage Capital Partners.

OnRequest Images

Seattle

www.onrequestimages.com

Amount/Round: $8M/C

Investors: European Founders Fund, Maveron, Frazier Technology Ventures.

Details: Provides custom photography and imagery services for corporations to build brands. The company had previously raised a $9M Series C round led by Menlo Ventures, Maveron and Frazier Technology Ventures. The company has now raised $30M in funding since 2004.

MED TECH

VisEn Medical Inc.

Woburn, Mass.

www.visenmedical.com

Amount/Round: $5M/B

Investors: Merck Capital Ventures, Flagship Ventures

Details: Develops molecular imaging technology. The funding brings the Series B round to $12.5M. Earlier backers from the Series B round include Siemens AG Medical Solutions and Spinnaker Capital.

MEDIA

VFM Interactive Inc.

Toronto, Ontario

www.visualfrenzy.com

Amount/Round: $13.5M/NA

Investors: Lake Capital (led), JLA Ventures, Centiva Capital.

Details: Provides rich media content solutions, such as streaming videos and virtual tours, to the lodging and travel industry. The company had raised more than $2M from JLA Ventures in 2004.

SECURITY

Altor Networks

Redwood City, Calif.

www.altornetworks.com

Amount/Round: $6M/B

Investors: Accel Partners, Foundation Capital.

Details: Provides virtual network security solutions.

SOFTWARE

Collective Intellect

Boulder, Colo.

www.collectiveintellect.com

Amount/Round: $6.6M/B

Investors: Grotech Capital Group (led), Crawley Hatfield Capital, Appian Ventures, Croghan Investments.

Details: Develops software that ranks media content for enterprises. The company has now raised more than $11M in funding since 2006.

MediaBank

Chicago

www.mbxg.com

Amount/Round: $30M/B

Investors: New Enterprise Associates.

Details: Provides integrated procurement and analytics software. The company had raised $10.5M from NEA last year.

Red Bend Software Inc.

Waltham, Mass.

www.redbend.com

Amount/Round: $10M/E

Investors: Coral Capital Management, Carmel Ventures, Greylock Partners, Infinity Venture Capital, Pitango Venture Capital, Poalim Ventures.

Details: Develops software for remotely updating mobile phone applications. The company has now raised $32.5M in total venture capital since early 2001.

VirtualLogix Inc.

Sunnyvale, Calif.

www.virtuallogix.com

Amount/Round: NA/NA

Investors: Motorola Ventures.

Details: Develops real-time virtualization software. The company recently closed a similar deal with Texas Instruments and, before that, raised a $16M Series B round from Esprit Capital Partners, Intel Capital, Atlas Venture and Index Ventures in 2007.

WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

MobiTV Inc.

Emeryville, Calif.

www.mobitv.com

Amount/Round: $5M/NA

Investors: Leader Ventures.

Details: Provides mobile and broadband television and music services. The company had previously raised about $118M in total VC funding since 2001, including a $100M Series C round in 2006 at a PMV in excess of $400M. Investors include Oak Investment Partners, Menlo Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Gefinor Ventures, Adobe Systems and Hearst Corp.