Sponsored Links
Cloud startup Coraid raises $25 million
Large fields of corn growing in fields in Otisco, Indiana, August 25, 2009.
Credit: Reuters/John Sommers II
SAN FRANCISCO (Venture Capital Journal) - Fresh off of its sale of storage provider 3PAR to Hewlett-Packard, Menlo Ventures last week backed Coraid Inc, a cloud-based storage solutions provider.
The Redwood City, California-based company raised a $25 million Series B investment led by Menlo Ventures with participation from Allegis Capital and Azure Capital Partners. Coraid, which develops Ethernet-based storage products, previously raised a $10 million Series A round from Azure and Allegis in late 2009.
As part of the deal, John Jarve, managing director of Menlo Ventures, joined the board of Coraid, which already includes Lara Druyan, a general partner with Allegis, and Paul Weinstein, a general partner with Azure.
Menlo was interested in taking part in Coraid's Series A round last year, but it was still an investor in 3PAR at the time and "we tend not to back companies that are competitive to others in our portfolio," Jarve said.
However, since that first round, Menlo Ventures had a hugely successful exit when HP won the bidding war for 3PAR, agreeing to pay about $2.4 billion for the publicly traded company, or about $33 a share. Menlo Ventures was the largest stockholder in 3PAR, holding 15 percent of the storage solutions provider, or about 9.4 million shares.
"The enterprise data storage sector has been big and successful, and we think Coraid, which already has hundreds of customer accounts, is ready to join the likes of 3PAR, Data Domain, EqualLogix and Spinnaker Networks to be equally as big," Jarve said.
In addition to Coraid, here's a select list of venture-backed companies to raise early stage funding rounds last week:
CONSUMER INTERNET
Yummly
Palo Alto, CA
Amount/Round: $1.8 million/seed stage
Investors: Harrison Metal Capital (led), Intel Capital, First Round Capital and individual investors
Details: Operates a food and recipe site with social networking functions.
HEALTH CARE
Tango Health Inc
Austin, TX
Amount/Round: $3 million/Series A
Investors: S3 Ventures and several individual investors
Details: Provides Web-based Health Savings Account management services. The company, which was founded in 2008, is led by CEO Duncan Van Dusen, who was previously vice president of sales and marketing for Works Inc.
MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS
Retailigence Inc
Palo Alto, CA
Amount/Round: $1.5 million/seed stage
Investors: Draper Fisher Jurvetson, 500 Startups, ZIG Capital and Global Brain Corp
Details: Develops location-based software that connects stores with mobile shoppers. The application works with such location-based services as Google Maps, Foursquare and Gowalla. Retailigence was founded in 2009 as part of the Founder Institute incubation program.
PHARMACEUTICALS
Verastem Inc
Boston, MA
Amount/Round: $16 million/A
Investors: Longwood Founders Fund (led), Bessemer Venture Partners, Cardinal Partners and MPM Capital
Details: Develops drugs that target cancer stem cells. Co-founders include Satish Jindal; Longwood Founders Fund Partner Rich Aldrich; Eric Lander from Broad Institute; Piyush Gupta and Robert Weinberg from Whitehead Institute; and Christoph Westphal, who launched Longwood Founders Fund earlier this year after leaving Sirtris Pharmaceuticals.
SOFTWARE
Adaptivity
Charlotte, NC
Amount/Round: $3 million/Series A
Investors: Intel Capital
Details: Develops software that helps businesses manage information technology. The funding brings the company's Series A funding round to $10.3 million. Tony Bishop, CEO of Adaptivity, founded the company in 2007.
STORAGE
Coraid Inc
Redwood City, CA
Amount/Round: $25 million/Series B
Investors: Menlo Ventures (led), Allegis Capital and Azure Capital Partners
Details: Provides Ethernet storage solutions. The company previously raised $10 million in funding.
- Tweet this
- Link this
- Share this
- Digg this
- Reprints
Follow Reuters