The last week has been a busy one for startups and venture firms San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Here are a few of the items that caught our eye, arranged from biggest to smallest:
$3.23 billion—Total venture-capital investments in Silicon Valley for the second quarter of 2012, according to data in the quarterly PriceWaterhouse/NVCA MoneyTree report, which is compiled using data from Thomson Reuters. That was a big increase (about 50 percent) over the first-quarter figure of $2.15 billion, but the spoils were distributed unevenly—life sciences deals plunged significantly in the second quarter.
$1.05 billion—The cash price fetched by Palo Alto-based network virtualization company Nicira, which was acquired today by VMware. VMware CEO Paul Maritz said the purchase positions VMware to become “the industry leader in software-defined networking,” a technology developed to allow switching hardware to be repurposed on demand.
$260 million—The proceeds from last week’s initial public offering by Palo Alto Networks (NYSE: [[ticker:PANW]]), the Palo Alto, CA-based maker of network security products. Some $63 million of that total went to selling shareholders. The stock debuted at $42 per share and is performing well so far, opening this week at about $53 per share.
$130 million—The size of a new Brazilian venture fund jointly created by Menlo Park, CA-based Redpoint Ventures and San Francisoc-based e.ventures. It’s “Brazil’s largest early-stage VC fund and the first Silicon Valley-affiliated fund dedicated to the region,” according to the two firms. E.ventures, formerly known as BV Capital, rebranded itself this month to highlight its network of five funds across Asia, Russia, Europe, South America, and the United States.
$28 million—-A Series B funding round announced today for Asana, the San Francisco-based maker of workplace collaboration software. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund led the round, which brings the company’s total funding to about $38 million.
$27 million—A new funding round announced July 19 for San Francisco-based Say Media, a publishing and advertising company building a network of niche-interest blogs. New Enterprise Associates, Shea Ventures, and Correlation Ventures participated in the round, alongside existing investors who had provided some $79 million in prior funding for Video Egg and Six Apart, the companies that merged in 2010 to form Say Media. Xconomy profiled Say Media in May 2011.
Under $25 million—The rumored purchase price for Sparrow, the Paris-based maker of Mac and iOS e-mail clients acquired last week by Google.
$15 million—A Series B funding round for Firespotter Labs, a Pleasanton, CA-based startup building a free audio conferencing service with visual enhancements. Andreessen Horowitz led the round.
$10 million—A Series E funding round for Mashery, a San Francisco company that manages the application programming interfaces (APIs) connecting many types of business software. OpenView Venture Partners led the round, with Cisco, Formative Ventures, First Round Capital, and .406 Ventures also participating. Mashery has raised about $35 million all told.
