investments

Angry Birds has been a breakout success for Finnish developer Rovio, and a new report says the company is considering capitalizing on that by taking a strategic investment that would put its value at around $1.2 billion.

Citing two people with knowledge of private discussions, Bloomberg reported today that Rovio is in investment talks with "a company in the entertainment business," who's looking to get a piece of the action.

In early March, Rovio announced that it secured $42 million in funding as part of a Series A round led by venture capital firms Accel Partners … Read more

They vacuum our floors and help fight our wars, but robots always seem to be just over the horizon. They're never as commonplace as we expected.

Still, that hasn't stopped prognosticators from predicting that robots will be the automobile of the 21st century, or that robots makers are now where Microsoft was in the late 1970s. The markets for industrial and service robots are already worth billions of dollars each, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) data.

Robotkind certainly got a major boost this week when electronics giant Foxconn, which makes everything from iPads to LCD TVs, announced that it's replacing some of its human workers, which number more than 900,000, with more than a million robots.

Of course, we all wish we'd bought shares in Microsoft and Google early on. That's the kind of thinking that led Frank Tobe, author of The Robot Report blog, to look into the sector and try to identify publicly traded robot makers that have growth potential.

In a recent critique of a list of 10 robot makers that appeared on the Nasdaq Web site, the Report's sub-blog, Everything Robotic, noted that some of the world's biggest robot companies, such as Japanese industrial robot makers Yaskawa and Fanuc, were not included.

Tobe also pointed out that Nasdaq missed rising stars like Intuitive Surgical, which produces the da Vinci surgery system, and Adept Technology, which makes automation systems.

Intrigued, we asked Tobe, a former political consultant, why he thinks now might be a good time to invest in our robotic future. … Read more

The latest numbers on venture capital investing emphatically show what insiders have seen for some time: many venture capitalists have cooled on once-trendy green-tech investing, creating a tough funding environment for fledgling green businesses.

PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association today released their quarterly MoneyTree Report, which shows a sharp increase in Internet investing and drop in the amount of money going to the clean-tech category.

The second quarter saw the most amount of money going to Internet-specific companies in 10 years, with $2.3 billion going to 275 companies, a 72 percent dollar increase from the first quarter. … Read more

Free business software isn't quite the same thing as free money, unless you're in business--especially by yourself or in a start-up, mom-and-pop, or other small enterprise that lives or dies by the bottom line. That's when tools like Nevitium Invoice Manager look more and more like money growing on trees. It's a top-quality invoice and quotes management utility that is free to use and distribute. It can manage customer and vendor relations, and it even includes a simple yet effective inventory manager.

Installing and setting up Nevitium involves two specific steps. First, we followed a multitabbed … Read more

Mobile payments start-up Square has acquired a $100 million investment from venture capital giant Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, valuing the company at more than $1 billion.

The company announced the investment on its Twitter feed. "To continue to empower everyone to accept payments anywhere, we've raised $100 million in our Series C Financing, led by @kpcb," the company tweeted. KPCB partner Mary Meeker will also be joining Square's board of directors.

The new round of financing has quadrupled the company's value in just six months when a $27.5 million round of funding led … Read more

While most of today's consumer electronics goods are designed with limited life expectancies, high-end audio gear has always been built to last for decades. Sure, it's more expensive to buy the good stuff, but when you stop and consider how many years of enjoyment you'll get out of a pair of really great speakers (or electronics) the investment makes a lot of sense. So instead of buying and replacing gear over and over again, just buy something really nice, once.

My Samsung Blu-ray player conked out just before its second birthday, and the one before that was … Read more

A top hedge fund manager is calling on Microsoft's Steve Ballmer to step aside as CEO and let someone else lead the company.

Speaking at the Ira Sohn Investment Research Conference in New York yesterday, David Einhorn, president of hedge fund Greenlight Capital, was outspoken in his criticism of Ballmer as a key factor holding back the company's stock.

"It's time for Microsoft's board to tell Steve Ballmer, 'All right, we see what you can do, let's give so-and-so a chance,'" Einhorn said. as quoted in a Bloomberg story. "His continued presence … Read more

As part of an effort to get YouTube visitors using the site for things besides user-made videos, YouTube is expanding its professionally produced offerings as well as increasing investments in its own programs, confirming reports from last month suggesting that the company wanted to add to its exclusive programming.

In a blog post, the video site announced today that it's adding some 3,000 new movies from studios like NBC Universal, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros.

"Today, we're going to start adding around 3,000 new movie titles for rent available to users in the U.S. (… Read more

Warren Buffett is warning investors to be careful about which social networks they friend with their investment dollars.

Buffett, the chief executive of the Berkshire Hathaway investment empire, warned investors Friday at a conference in New Delhi to be wary of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter--a sector that has recently generated great interest and anticipation on Wall Street.

"Most of them will be overpriced," Buffett said, according to a Bloomberg report. "It's extremely difficult to value social-networking-site companies."

"Some will be huge winners, which will make up for the rest," he … Read more