AAA Weekly corporate venturing deal net: 9-13 June 2014

Weekly corporate venturing deal net: 9-13 June 2014

Cheetah Medical, a US-based developer of hemodynamic monitoring systems, has secured $5m from growth equity firm HighCape Partners. It had previously raised almost $49m across rounds in 2010 and February this year from corporate venturing units Robert Bosch Venture Capital and Ascension Ventures, as well as MVM Life Science Partners, Springfield Investment Management and Fletcher Spaght Ventures.

ScalingData, a US-based big data application developer founded earlier this year, raised $4.4m in seed funding on Thursday from Google Ventures, Google’s corporate venturing subsidiary, General Catalyst Partners and Brian Stevens, the CTO of software firm Red Hat. Two of the company’s founders are ex-employees of Cloudera, the big data company that raised $900m in March.

IT analytics firm HasOffers made its first strategic investment on Tuesday, providing an undisclosed amount of seed funding for MobileAds, the Malaysia-based provider of an enterprise platform for the low-cost creation of mobile advertisements. The startup will invest the capital in expanding into the US market and scaling future growth.

Ukraine-based sales, distribution and e-commerce group Gill Business Systems secured $3m from a series A round on Tuesday backed by Intel Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of semiconductor manufacturer Intel, as well as InVenture Partners and FinSight Ventures. The funding will be used to expand in the Ukraine, as well as in Russia, South-East Asia and Africa.

Israel-based enterprise communication app developer Zula has raised $3m in a series A round backed by Microsoft Ventures, the corporate venture capital subsidiary of computing company Microsoft, which previously invested an undisclosed sum in November 2013, TechCrunch reported on Wednesday. Morton Meyerson of philanthropic investment firm 2M led the round, which also featured OurCrowd, Nathan Low and Doug Pauly. Zula previously raised a $1.1m seed round in May last year.

Move Loot, a US-based service that helps users buy and sell furniture, closed a $2.8m seed round on Monday featuring Google Ventures. The round was led by First Round Capital and Index Ventures, and also included SV Angel and Y Combinator. Although it operates only in San Francisco right now, Move Loot plans to expand to at least two more cities by the end of 2014.

Wut, the US-based developer of an app for the iOS platform that enables users to send semi-anonymous messages to each other, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding in a round led by Foundation Capital that also included Google Ventures, SV Angel, Eniac Ventures, Lowercase Capital, and Slow Ventures, TechCrunch reported on Wednesday. Wut plans to now hire additional engineers and develop a version for Android.

Nuzzel, a US-based real-time social news aggregator, raised $1.7m on Thursday in a second seed round from investors including internet company Digital Garage, Lowercase Capital, Streamlined Ventures and Homebrew. It previously secured $1.7m from an earlier seed round in 2012 backed by corporate venturing unit IDG Ventures, SoftTech VC and several angel investors.

Media company E.W. Scripps invested $1m in US-based motivational social network Besomebody on Thursday. The startup’s ethos lies behind a blog started by CEO and former GoPro employee Kash Shaikh, and it aims to help people make money from their personal passions and connect with others who share them.

Singapore-based enterprise networking software maker Pie has secured $800,000 in seed funding from investors including internet services provider and incubator Digital Garage, and communication services provider Publicis Groupe, TechCrunch reported on Tuesday. Siemer Ventures and several angel investors also took part in the round, and Pie plans to monetise its product by offering it as a freemium service.

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