Psilos, Box, Blekko: Bay Area BizTech By the Numbers

It’s time for our data-driven news roundup. From the biggest number to the smallest:

$400 million—The target size of a new venture fund being raised by health IT investor Psilos Group, according to a report today in PE Hub. The firm has offices in Corte Madera, CA, New York, and Santa Fe, NM. Psilos partner Lisa Suennen is an Xconomist.

More than $50 million—The amount San Francisco-based Salesforce.com is investing in Palo Alto-based Box.net, the provider of cloud-based document sharing services for businesses, as part of ongoing funding round, according to a report yesterday from VentureWire’s Deborah Gage. Box.net, which has already raised $77.5 million in equity-based financing and debt, held its first user conference in San Francisco this week.

$46.7 million—The amount in cash and milestone payments that Neophotonics, the San Jose, CA-based maker of photonic integrated circuits for high-speed communications networks, will pay to acquire Santur, which makes tunable lasers for photonic devices. That’s a loss for Santur investors Menlo Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Thomas Weisel Venture Partners and VantagePoint Capital Partners, who had put $116 million into the Fremont, CA-based company, according to VentureWire.

$30 million—A Series D funding round announced yesterday for Blekko, the Redwood Shores, CA-based maker of a user-curated search engine. Strategic investor Yandex (NASDAQ: [[ticker:YNDX]]) led the round, which was joined by existing investors U.S. Venture Partners, CMEA Capital, and PivotNorth Capital.

$15 million—A Series D funding round announced September 28 for DisplayLink, the Palo Alto, CA-based maker of software and hardware for connecting external monitors to desktop and laptop computers. New investor Cipio Partners and existing investor DFJ Esprit led the round, which was joined by previous backers Atlas Venture, Balderton Capital and DAG Ventures.

$13 million—A new funding round for San Diego-based SweetLabs (formerly Open Candy), led by Santa Clara, CA-based Intel Capital. My colleague Bruce Bigelow had all the details.

$6.5 million—A Series B funding round announced yesterday for TwitVid, a San Francisco startup that allows users to share videos via Twitter. Azure Capital led the round, with Draper Fisher Jurvetson also on board.

$5 million—A round of debt financing for San Francisco-based cloud software and services provider Joyent, as disclosed in a September 27 regulatory filing.

$4.8 million—A new round of equity-based financing for Bluestack Systems, revealed in a September 28 regulatory filing. The Campbell, CA-based startup makes software that allows applications written for the Android mobile operating system to run on Windows PCs. The company emerged from stealth mode in May of this year and collected $7.6 million in Series A funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Ventures, Helion Ventures, Radar Partners, and Redpoint Ventures.

$2 million—Seed funding for Wheelz, a Palo Alto, CA-based campus car sharing platform that came out of stealth mode this week. Backers include Felicis Ventures, Red Swan Ventures, and individual investors Chamath Palihapitiya, Jim Freer, and Sebastien De Halleax.

$2 million—A funding round for Socialbakers, a Prague-based portal for social media statistics with its U.S. headquarters in San Francisco. German fund Earlybird Venture Capital led the round.

$1.3 million—A new financing round for San Jose, CA-based Vidder, described in a September 27 regulatory filing. Vidder designs custom security software for large enterprises and government agencies; it collected $2.7 million in 2009 from Onset Ventures and Voyager Capital.

10—The number of minutes, according to Mountain View, CA-based Lexity, required to create and publish a Web ad on its new platform. The advertising optimization startup was formerly known as Vurve but rebranded itself this week and unveiled an Adchemy-like system for creating ads targeted to specific themes or user intents.

4.5—The number of stars iTunes App Store reviewers are giving so far to Quora’s new iPhone app, released this week. In addition to offering the full content of its Q&A site, the Quora app lets users browse questions and answers by location, and notifies users when questions they’re following have new answers.

Author: Wade Roush

Between 2007 and 2014, I was a staff editor for Xconomy in Boston and San Francisco. Since 2008 I've been writing a weekly opinion/review column called VOX: The Voice of Xperience. (From 2008 to 2013 the column was known as World Wide Wade.) I've been writing about science and technology professionally since 1994. Before joining Xconomy in 2007, I was a staff member at MIT’s Technology Review from 2001 to 2006, serving as senior editor, San Francisco bureau chief, and executive editor of TechnologyReview.com. Before that, I was the Boston bureau reporter for Science, managing editor of supercomputing publications at NASA Ames Research Center, and Web editor at e-book pioneer NuvoMedia. I have a B.A. in the history of science from Harvard College and a PhD in the history and social study of science and technology from MIT. I've published articles in Science, Technology Review, IEEE Spectrum, Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Technology and Culture, Alaska Airlines Magazine, and World Business, and I've been a guest of NPR, CNN, CNBC, NECN, WGBH and the PBS NewsHour. I'm a frequent conference participant and enjoy opportunities to moderate panel discussions and on-stage chats. My personal site: waderoush.com My social media coordinates: Twitter: @wroush Facebook: facebook.com/wade.roush LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/waderoush Google+ : google.com/+WadeRoush YouTube: youtube.com/wroush1967 Flickr: flickr.com/photos/wroush/ Pinterest: pinterest.com/waderoush/