Qualcomm Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of network equipment company Qualcomm and one of the most active investors this year with more than 10 deals, has joined the consortium investing $25m in the series B round for Waze, a US-based social mapping company with two million users.
Venture capital firm BlueRun Ventures, which span off from mobile phone maker Nokia in 2005 but retains the company as a limited partner, led the round as a repeat investor, and was joined by VC peers Magma Venture Partners and Vertex Venture Capital.
In his blog, Noam Bardin, chief executive of Waze, said: "So what’s in store for 2011? First of all – we have big plans to improve and grow our service. Lots of great features, functionality and infrastructure upgrades (prepare for a blazing fast Cartouch…).
"Second – this will be the year of opening up our platform – data, APIs [application programming interface that lets software interact with other bits of code], access (more to come soon)…
"Third – We plan to take crowdsourcing further than it has ever gone before. We want media companies to engage users as citizen journalists, and NBC2 is just the first step toward this.
"We want to enable local governments to encourage users to report about hazards on the road to help keep our roads safe. We want major brands to provide Wazer’s with incentives to visit their establishment, helping you find deals on the road."
Waze raised $12m in its series A round in March 2008, according to news provider TopNews.