Boston Tech Roundup: Attune, Cognex, GreenBytes, LevelUp, & More

Here we go, catching up on an insanely busy news and events week in Boston. (That’s it, Curt, no more vacations.)

—Cognex (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CGNX]]), the Natick, MA-based computer-vision tech company (which I always forget is locally based), filed a lawsuit against Renton, WA-based Microscan over alleged patent infringement. You can read the details in the Boston Business Journal.

—Nuance Communications (NASDAQ: [[ticker:NUAN]]), the Burlington, MA-based speech-and-other-interfaces company, is working on a new kind of voice-interactive ad technology, as my colleague Ben Romano reported from the firm’s Seattle office. Boston-area mobile-ad companies Jumptap and Celtra are working with Nuance on this effort; think ads that talk to you (I have a pretty good idea what I’d say back). Meanwhile, billionaire investor Carl Icahn now owns 9.27 percent of Nuance; check out the SEC filing and the Boston Globe for more details. This could get interesting.

—Attune Consulting, a global software maker for the fashion and lifestyle industries with a U.S. base in Burlington, MA, has raised $20 million from MAS Holdings. As part of the deal, the company is merging with Sabre Technologies, a 12-year-old developer of Web and mobile software.

—LevelUp, the Boston-based mobile payments and rewards startup, got some unwelcome press from BostInno, which asserted that the company has been shrinking and needs to raise money fast. In a series of tweets, LevelUp founder Seth Priebatsch disputed the article’s main assertions, saying, “We aren’t running out of cash” and “revenue is strong.”

—Providence, RI-based GreenBytes has raised a $7 million Series C round from previous investors Generation Investment Management (of Al Gore fame) and Battery Ventures, bringing its total raised to over $30 million. GreenBytes, which got started in 2007, makes desktop virtualization and data storage technologies with the goal of being both high-performance and energy-efficient.

—Speaking of Rhode Island news, if you missed the Crunchbutton vs. Brown University story, I recommend you read it. You can probably skip most of the comments on Slashdot and Hacker News, though, unless you want to see a lot of Brown-bashing and misinterpretations.

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.