The Active Network Files for IPO, EcoATM Banks $14M, Qualcomm Issues Augmented Reality Awards, & More San Diego BizTech News

Capital isn’t exactly flowing freely, but it’s flowing better now than it was two years ago, if last week’s San Diego tech deals are any guide. We’ve got that wrapped up for you here, along with the rest of the biztech report.

—San Diego-based EcoATM, a startup developing automated kiosks for recycling cell phones and other electronics, raised $14.4 million in a Series A round of financing led by Coinstar (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CSTR]]) and Claremont Creek Ventures. The financing, which includes a venture loan from Silicon Valley Bank, should enable the company to begin manufacturing its kiosks. EcoATM also got a Small Business Innovation Research Grant and was granted its first patent.

—San Diego’s Active Network filed for an IPO, proposing to raise $150 million. The Active Network, founded in 1998 to provide online registrations for marathons and triathlons, now provides online registration and marketing services for more than 47,000 organizations, including recreation leagues, educational institutions, corporations, government agencies, and non-profit groups.

—San Diego’s Slacker has raised an additional $3 million in financing, bringing the startup’s total to at least $26 million since the streaming radio service was founded in 2006.

—In a Q&A with The San Diego Union Tribune, Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens outlined details of his proposed domestic energy, which is intended to get America off the foreign oil habit. Pickens, who logged 38 town hall meetings last year, says he doesn’t want the government to pay for any infrastructure, but he’d like to see truckers get some help on the difference in cost as an incentive to switch from diesel to natural gas. “Once we move

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.