funding

Institutional Venture Partners closes $1 billion fund

Institutional Venture Partners has secured $1 billion for a new investment fund.

The company broke the news to TechCrunch earlier today, telling the startup blog that it's calling the fund IVP XIV. The $1 billion raised is the largest fund the company has ever had and brings its total committed capital to $4 billion.

"Essentially it's going to be the same strategy," IVP General Partner Jules Maltz told TechCrunch in an interview. "We're a late-stage firm, we're very focused. We only do tech investing. We don't do China, we don't do … Read more

Codecademy raises $10 million in second financing round

Codecademy, a site that helps users learn how to code for free, has raised $10 million in a second round of financing.

The company announced today that the round was led by Index Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. Those investment firms now join Unique Square Ventures and Virgin Group founder Richard Branson among the company's investors. Codecademy raised $2.5 million in its first financing round.

"With this new funding, we're going to keep doing what we've been doing," Codecademy wrote on its blog today. "We've reached millions of students in more than 100 … Read more

Mark Cuban leads funding of video startup Switchcam

Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban is leading a round of seed funding in a new video startup called Switchcam that has technology that can be used to stitch together different videos of the same event so viewers can switch camera angles as they wish.

Other investors in the $1.2 million round, raised via AngelList, include Dave McClure's 500 Startups, Turner Media Camp, Vikas Gupta, Niket Desai, Reed Morse, David Beyer and Jeffrey Schox, Switchcam announced today.

Switchcam CEO Brett Welch told CNET that he got the idea while using his phone to take video of live music concerts. Unlike … Read more

Camera+ boasts 8M copies sold in two years

Camera+ gets the bonus of selling its 8 millionth app on the same day as its second birthday. Quite an achievement in the face of other popular apps like Instagram and Hipstamatic, especially when the company has publicly refused VC funding and offers of acquisition.

The company's founder John Casasanta wrote in a blog post today that over the past two years, Camera+ has been approached by several companies looking to buy, including Adobe, Zynga, Google, and Twitter. Camera+ declined every time because of the company's goal to retain its independence. It also turned down its first round … Read more

Liquid Metal Battery raises $15M in series B financing

Liquid Metal Battery, an MIT spinoff backed by Bill Gates, has secured an additional $15 million in series B financing in a funding round led by Khosla Ventures, the company announced today.

The Cambridge, Mass.-based company, which aims to build a cheap battery for bulk storage of wind and solar power, also announced that Andrew Chung, a Khosla Ventures partner, would join the board.

"Our Liquid Metal Battery technology is tremendously exciting because it has the potential to dramatically change the electric power system everywhere," Liquid Metal Battery CEO Phil Giudice said in a statement announcing the … Read more

Stealth startup Airtime raises $25M, buys Erly

Airtime, the video startup founded by Napster duo Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, announced today that it had closed a second round of funding and had purchased another startup.

The mysterious company raised $25 million, according to a TechCrunch report. The startup also announced the acquisition of Erly, a company founded in 2011 that claims to provide a "new social platform for organizing and sharing your personal content." Terms of the deal were not revealed.

Erly was founded by CEO Eric Feng, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which led Airtime's round of financing. … Read more

Magnetic football perfect for butterfingers

I'm not one to watch an NFL game on TV or toss around the pigskin in the park, but if I did I would probably benefit from this magnetic football.

Ultimate Reception is a campaign on crowd-funding site IndieGoGo aimed at developing a magnetic football and gloves that improve catching ability.

Actually, the gloves are embedded with powerful magnets that attract a special layer in the football's skin. They're strong enough so that the ball will stick to the glove when the arm is outstretched and palm down. … Read more

Why did Rakuten invest so much in Pinterest? Integration

Pinterest surprised Silicon Valley with the announcement overnight of a $100 million funding round led by Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten.

According to AllThingsDigital, more than $50 million of that sum came from Rakuten.

Why would Rakuten, which generated $4.7 billion in revenue last year, invest so much cash in Pinterest? According to TechCrunch, it may have a lot to do with Rakuten's interest in building its e-commerce business.

Rakuten offers user IDs similar to those from Amazon and Apple. Once people log in to a Rakuten or Rakuten-associated Web site, they can make purchases with the payment information … Read more

Pinterest pins down $100M in new funding

Last update: May 17 at 4:38 a.m. PT.

Pinterest has garnered investment interest from one of the world's largest Internet service providers, in a move that could value the social photo-sharing service at $1.5 billion.

Rakuten, which runs the largest e-commerce site in Japan, announced Thursday that it is leading a $100 million round of investment in Pinterest. Participating in the round are existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, and FirstMark Capital, along with an unspecified number of angel investors.

Rakuten's portion of the funding is in excess of $50 million, according to All Things D, … Read more

Bitly picks up $20M in funding

Bitly, a tech company known for URL shortening, looks like it's heading toward greener pastures and making more user products. The New York-based company is said to have raised about $20 million in funding, according to tech news site The Verge, citing multiple sources. This is double the amount the company raised in its previous round of funding.

"The link shortening has always been a bit of a Trojan Horse," investor Joshua Stylman told The Verge. "Bitly is really an analytics tool for tracking content across the open, distributed web, and doing it at a massive, … Read more