Boston Tech Roundup: FlightCar, ReWalk, Skyword, Visible Measures

A few interesting fundraising deals to catch up with this week—one of them involving a West Coast relocation—along with reports of layoffs at a well-funded tech startup in town:

FlightCar, a startup that lets everyday drivers rent their cars to other people while they’re away traveling, has raised a Series A investment round of $13.5 million. The company also has quietly relocated its headquarters from Cambridge, MA, to the San Francisco area. CEO Rujul Zaparde tells me the company’s leadership had been spending roughly half its time in San Francisco anyway, and almost all of its investors are in that area.

Skyword, a Boston-based marketing software and services company, has raised another $11 million and acquired another startup. The investment comes from Cox Media Group, and the acquisition is Vidaao, a New York-based video marketing company. Terms of the sale were not disclosed. Skyword says Vidaao will now represent its New York office.

ReWalk Robotics, an Israel-based medical device startup with an office in Marlborough, MA, has raised net proceeds of about $31 million in an IPO—down from earlier sale estimates of about $50 million. The company makes a robotic “exoskeleton” system that it says can help people with spinal cord injuries walk.

Visible Measures, a video-advertising tech company based in Boston, has reportedly laid off a sizable chunk of its workforce. Details come from BetaBoston, which pegs the size of the layoffs at around 30 people, or about a quarter of the company’s previous headcount. Visible Measures has raised more than $60 million in private investment, including a $21.5 million round in 2012.

Author: Curt Woodward

Curt covered technology and innovation in the Boston area for Xconomy. He previously worked in Xconomy’s Seattle bureau and continued some coverage of Seattle-area tech companies, including Amazon and Microsoft. Curt joined Xconomy in February 2011 after nearly nine years with The Associated Press, the world's largest news organization. He worked in three states and covered a wide variety of beats for the AP, including business, law, politics, government, and general mayhem. A native Washingtonian, Curt earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA. As a past president of the state's Capitol Correspondents Association, he led efforts to expand statehouse press credentialing to online news outlets for the first time.