Smaller deals were the rule last week, but this first one marked an exception.
—Evergreen Solar (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ESLR]]) of Marlboro, MA, inked about $1 billion worth of new long-term sales deals. The company, which was formed in 1994 to commercialize “string ribbon” solar-cell manufacturing technology invented at MIT, now has long-term agreements with eight customers worth a combined value of nearly $2 billion.
—Burlington, MA-based medical imaging firm HyperMed closed a $4 million round of funding from Greenwich, CT-based GBP Capital.
—Dialysis products maker NxStage Medical (NASDAQ: [[ticker:NXTM]]) of Lawrence, MA, announced it plans to raise $43 million in a private placement of its common stock and warrants. The deal will be closed in two tranches—a $25 million first tranche to be completed on or before May 28, and an $18 million tranche expected to close during the third quarter, pending stockholder approval.
—Boston’s Spark Capital made a cool $9.7 million—a 48 percent return on its four-month investment—when CBS bought CNET Networks for $1.8 billion.
—Woburn, MA’s Wilson TurboPower got $500,000 from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative to fund the development of its industrial heat exchanger, which is expected to lower the cost of electricity generation from biomass and fuel cells.
—Business database firm ZoomInfo of Waltham, MA, spun off its ad-service unit, which targets ads to Web users based on sophisticated guesses about their job titles and roles. The new business demographics or “bizographics” firm, called Bizo, will be based in San Francisco.
—Waltham, MA-based Atlas Venture co-led an $8 million Series A investment in Boulder, CO-based Miragen Therapeutics. Colorado-based Boulder Ventures was the other founding investor in the firm, which was launched to use the hot new science of microRNA to develop treatments for heart failure and muscle disease.
