Ripple is a distributed exchange that can be used for Bitcoin and other currencies, too. Google Ventures and IDG’s investment is the latest in a recent string for firms handling virtual currencies. Read more »
Google Ventures is looking to become one of the top-tier VC firms in Silicon Valley, and hiring high-profile partners is part of the path to the top. Read more »
Khosla Ventures, Eric Schmidt, Marc Benioff and Scott Banister pony up for Series A round as Jessica Jackley and Bob Kerrey join board of startup that matches college grads with backers. Read more »
Solar financier Clean Power Finance has raised a large round of $37 million from Valley investors Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures and Claremont Creek. Solar financing and installations are one of the bright spots in the solar sector. Read more »
Internet giants, investors and web and mobile startups are placing even more emphasis on design and user experience in 2013. Read more »
Learning thermostat maker Nest has closed on $80 million to keep growing, and we’ve heard it’s shipping 40K to 50K thermostats per month. The round was raised at an $800 million valuation and the company could reach a million per year shipment rate by the Summer. Read more »
The growth of the mobile advertising industry has been hampered by a lack of marketing data about smartphone users. Adelphic, a company that says it uses 30 signals to collect customer information, announced a major new investment on Tuesday. Read more »
What happened this week in cleantech on GigaOM Pro, our premium research service? — The opportunities and risks in the share economy, the third quarter dreary cleantech figures, Google Ventures explains why it backed Nest, and Calxeda forecasts its next low power chip. Read more »
Expect Labs, the company that is helping usher in the era of anticipatory (or predictive) computing says it has received a big cash infusion from well known investors such as Greylock Partners and Google. The company also expects to launch its MindMeld app sometime this year. Read more »
Rich Miner isn’t a huge fan of Apple Maps. The co-founder of Android, who is now a partner at Google Ventures, had that to say, as well as that carriers just keep on conceding and RIM’s market share loss is an opportunity for startups. Read more »
Former Google exec David Girouard’s Upstart wants to match promising, not-necessarily-techie college entrepreneurs with backers and mentors. The goal is to fuel the creation of a new generation of startups that would otherwise never see the light of day. Read more »
Pocket, the web-content-saving company formerly known as Read It Later, has raised $5 million in a Series B funding round and will use the money to expand its platform. The company now has nearly six million users. Read more at paidContent »
Egnyte nets $16 million in Series C funding to position itself as a leading hybrid cloud storage provider. The cash brings its total funding to $32 million. Google Ventures led the round which included funding from existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Polaris. Read more »
Most platforms as a service focus on helping developers write shiny new cloud-based applications. Startup CliQr Technologies is more interested in putting the applications that already run businesses into the best cloud to run them and then to make them transportable from cloud to cloud. Read more »
This quarter the EV market struggled to find its footing. Meanwhile, the smart-grid sector solidified and low-power technology proved itself important in the data center. Read more to learn what these news pieces and others mean for the larger space over the next few months. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Out of all of Google’s close to $1 billion in clean power projects, turning biomass into energy seems like the least relevant technology to Google’s core business. But Google has made a few small investments into biomass projects, including a hog waste to energy project. Read more »
Do recent struggles dominating the news represent the beginning of the end for green technology? Nah, it looks like business as usual for Silicon Valley. Only one in ten start-ups ever make it, VCs like to say, and failure makes you stronger. Read more »
Just a few days after one social TV startup hit the dead pool, another is raising new funding. Miso announced Thursday that it’s raised a $4 million financing round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from existing investors Google Ventures and Hearst Interactive Media. Read more »
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The iPod of thermostats is sold-out until 2012. Nest Labs, makers of the connected, smart, “learning” thermostat, say on their website that the hot thermostat is “sold out through early next year.” In the meantime, the company has closed its online store. Read more »
Can gorgeous design, learning algorithms and millions in venture capital funding make a simple home thermostat as coveted as the iPhone? If anyone can achieve such a lofty goal it’s Tony Fadell, the godfather of the iPod and iPhone, who has founded connected thermostat company Nest. Read more »
Startup WeatherBill has built a business around offering farmers financial protection against weather, but the underlying goal of the company has always been to help companies adapt to a changing climate, the company’s CEO and Co-Founder David Friedberg told me. Read more »
As our demand for data increases, so too do the number of mobile devices and services. Add to that the infrastructure needed to support such connectivity, and a wide, complex picture of the mobile industry emerges. This report examines the various sectors of the mobile landscape and what the future holds for each. Hardware, cloud services, mobile search, advertising, location-based services and the growing ubiquity of the Internet of Things will all play an important role in the concept of mobility as it shifts and evolves over the next several years. With the help of more than a dozen contributors, GigaOM Pro presents a comprehensive analysis of the companies and trends that will lead us into the next era of mobile. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Neighbor-to-neighbor car sharing startup Getaround has raised a seed round of funding of $3.4 million. Investors in the round include TechCrunch creator Michael Arrington‘s Crunchfund, Redpoint Ventures, General Catalyst, and a group of angel investors. Read more »
Echoecho, a Los Angeles–based startup, lets people request location updates from friends in their phone address book, who can decide whether to respond with their coordinates. The company announced Thursday that it has raised $750,000 in seed funding from Google Ventures and UK-based PROFounders Capital. Read more »
The Googlization of solar is here, and software, big data, wireless networks and IT will be a fundamental part of the future of modern energy infrastructure. Read more »
Data centers might not be the energy hogs anticipated in 2010, but they’re still offering a growing market for both energy efficiency technology and clean power. Read more »
Astrid is best known for making a popular web and mobile app that allows users to create to-do lists with social features. But with a new batch of funding from Google Ventures and others, the San Francisco-based startup has a much bigger picture in mind. Read more »
In the web’s most popular marketplaces, such as eBay and Craigslist, anonymity is still the norm. A new San Francisco-based startup called Copious is looking to change that. Copious has built an online marketplace in which all buyers and sellers are linked to their Facebook identities. Read more »
The road hasn’t been easy for Next Autoworks (formerly V-Vehicle), which is backed by Google Ventures, T. Boone Pickens, and Kleiner Perkins. But the way forward has grown even rockier as legislators consider a proposal to shuffle around funds set aside for Next Autoworks’ project. Read more »
While using the web to share “stuff” is still a relatively new concept, the business model is being adopted by a growing number of companies, and I think it has started to reach a tipping point and become more mainstream. Read more »
Using silicon for converting power for electronics, gadgets and computing has reached its limit — or so says the CEO of startup Transphorm, Umesh Mishra. On Tuesday the company, which is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Google Ventures, launched a 600-volt transistor. Read more »
Enphase Energy has made a name for itself as a trailblazer of the microinverter market. But keeping that lead won’t be easy, and the company is launching a series of new products that are smaller and lighter and more tailored for different customer types. Read more »
Google Ventures has made its first biofuels investment. On Thursday afternoon, the venture arm of the search giant announced that it has invested in a startup called CoolPlanetBiofuels, which makes what the company calls “negative carbon fuels.” Bill Maris of Google Ventures explains. Read more »
Neighbor to neighbor car sharing startup RelayRides has raised a little over $5 million. RelayRides announced the round, which was led by Google Ventures and August Capital, back in December, but the company didn’t disclose the size of the round at that time. Read more »
Transphorm, the startup that emerged from stealth with plans for building energy-efficient power conversion modules and with $38 million in backing from investors Kleiner Perkins and Google Ventures, has unveiled its first product: power diodes made of gallium nitride that can be embedded in power converters. Read more »
Weather data tools and technologies for adapting to climate change are the next hot place for innovation. Weather insurance startup WeatherBill announced it has raised a second funding round of $42 million from Google Ventures and Khosla Ventures, and including existing investors. Read more »
Here comes the biggest cleantech startup launch since Bloom Energy: Transphorm has emerged from stealth at Google Ventures’s headquarters, touting an energy efficient power conversion module and an enviable $38 million in venture capital from Kleiner Perkins, Google Ventures, Foundation Capital, and Lux Capital. Read more »
If you live in a city, you might have a car sharing service, but some day you could have car sharing 2.0. That’s what RelayRides, a young startup that offers neighbor-to-neighbor car sharing, and is backed by Google Ventures and August Capital, is trying to offer. Read more »
It’s a new day for V-Vehicle, an auto startup with ambitions to produce low-cost efficient cars. The company has just taken two steps common among startups whose investors are unhappy and pushing for a restart: a new name — Next Autoworks Co. — and a new CEO. Read more »
