It was another quiet week for deals in the Northwest, as the holiday weekend brought summer to its unofficial close. We saw a little activity in software, mobile, and semiconductors, and heard from an old Seattle-area dealmaker (see below).
—Kai-Fu Lee, the former Microsoft vice president and founding director of Microsoft Research Asia, has quit as head of Google China and has raised $115 million to create an incubator for high-tech startups in China, as Bob reported. The new organization, Innovation Works, is based in Beijing and is backed by investors including WI Harper Group, Foxconn Technology Group, the Legend Group, the New Oriental Education & Technology Group, and YouTube co-founder Steve Chen. Lee’s incubator will focus on building startups in the Internet, mobile, e-commerce, and cloud computing spaces.
—Bellevue, WA-based VoiceBox Technologies said it has raised $13 million from corporate investors in Asia, including AutoNavi, Inventec, MiTAC, and the Morningside investment fund, since 2008, bringing the company’s total funding to about $21 million. VoiceBox, which makes speech recognition technologies for voice-based search in automotive and mobile applications, is looking to raise an additional $15 million from institutional investors.
—Hillsboro, OR-based TriQuint Semiconductor has acquired TriAccess Technologies, a maker of integrated-circuit amplifiers for multimedia applications, based in Santa Rosa, CA. Terms of the deal were not announced. TriQuint (NASDAQ: [[ticker:TQNT]]) develops wireless communication technologies for mobile, cellular, aerospace, and defense projects.
—Seattle-based Dashwire, a maker of synchronization software for Web and mobile devices, raised about $1.1 million in new equity financing. Bellevue, WA-based Trilogy Equity Partners is a new investor in the startup, which previously raised $1.6 million from Best Buy Capital and Seattle-area investor Geoff Entress in May.
