EMC, Ember, Spindle, Yottaa, & More Boston-Area Deals

A bunch of small-ish deals (and some not so small) to catch up on from the past week…

—Hopkinton, MA-based EMC (NYSE: [[ticker:EMC]]) has acquired Syncplicity for an undisclosed price. The cloud-based file management startup, based in Silicon Valley, will be integrated into EMC’s Information Intelligence Group. The move is viewed as helping EMC compete with Dropbox for big enterprise customers.

—Boston-based TurningArt has raised $1.5 million more from NextView Ventures and other investors. The Web startup lets you browse for independent artwork and click to order prints.

—Cambridge, MA-based Spindle (fka Biff Labs) has raised $775,000 from investors including Polaris Ventures, Atlas Venture, Greylock Partners, SV Angel, and Ray Ozzie. The company is trying to build a “discovery engine for the social Web.”

—Boston wireless-networking firm Ember is being acquired by Texas-based Silicon Laboratories (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SLAB]]) for $72 million plus earnouts. It’s been a long, fun ride for Ember, which started in 2001. CEO Bob LeFort, co-founder Rob Poor, and investor Bob Metcalfe shed some light on the deal and what it means.

—Boston startup Yottaa announced a $9 million Series B financing from General Catalyst Partners, Stata Venture Partners, Cambridge West Ventures, and other investors. Yottaa is building Web infrastructure technology with the goal of helping businesses make their websites run faster on browsers and mobile devices.

—Cambridge, MA-based Ra Pharmaceuticals closed an $8.6 million tranche of its $27 million Series A. The company’s tech platform is designed to generate protein-like molecules that can combat a range of diseases.

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.