Happy Wednesday! (Though it kind of feels like it should be Thursday, doesn’t it? No? Just us?)

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Top News in the A.M.

Didi Kuaidi, Uber’s biggest rival in China, confirmed that it has raised $2 billion in funding —  the largest private equity raise in the world and an amount that takes its cash reserves to $3.5 billion, it says. TechCrunch sources say the round values Didi Kuaidi at $15 billion.

Yikes. Microsoft plans to cut as many as 7,800 jobs and write down roughly $7.6 billion on its Nokia phone-handset unit, wiping out nearly all of the value of a business it acquired just 14 months ago, reports Bloomberg.

NYSE trading was halted a bit earlier owing to a technical issue. More here.

Speaking of delays: United Airlines flights are no longer grounded this morning after its computer system malfunctioned, but press reports say to expect heavy delays throughout major airports. About 3,500 flights were affected and delays could reach 235 domestic and 138 international destinations.

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Longtime VC Paul Lee is Back — With a Startup Factory

Over the last decade of so, Paul Lee had enjoyed a nice career as a venture capitalist. Last year, an idea began to nag at him, though, and in November, he left his job of several years, as an investor at Lightbank in Chicago, to pursue it with two other former Lightbank colleagues, Ryan Jeffery and Kathryn Saluke, and their friend Arman Ghosh.

The fruit of their labor: nine-month-oldRoniin, a Chicago-based startup that spins off other startups — with a few twists that we haven’t seen before.

More here.

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New Fundings

Axtria, a six-year-old, Berkeley Heights, N.J.-based big data analytics company, has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Helion Ventures, with participation from individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

Babbel, an eight-year-old, Berlin, Germany-based language learning service, has raised $22 million in funding led by Scottish Equity Partners, with participation from Reed Elsevier Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners, and VC Fonds Technology Berlin. More here.

Chakratec, a two-year-old, Lod, Israel-based maker of an energy storage system based on kinetic batteries, has raised $2 million in Series B funding led by ZZRunner, a China-based firm. More here.

Confluent, a 10-month-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based real-time data platform built around Apache Kafka, has raised $24 million in Series B funding led byIndex Ventures, with participation from Benchmark, which had led the company’s $7 million Series A. Fortune has more here.

Core Informatics, a nine-year-old, Branford, Ct.-based maker of data management software for scientists, has raised $17.5 million in Series B funding led by Oak HC/FT, with participation from earlier investors. More here.

GoodWorld, a 1.5-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based “company whose technology enables nonprofits to raise money more easily from their followers on social media networks, has raised $1.7 million in seed funding led by Nyca Partners. Camp One Ventures, Fenway Summer Ventures and others also joined the round. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

IrisVR, a year-old, New York City-based startup aiming to create a suite of products that help edit, share and visualize 3D models in virtual reality, has raised $1.6 million in funding led by Indicator Ventures and Valar Ventures. More here.

KnowledgeHound, a year-old, Chicago, Il.-based enterprise market research data-retrieval and visualization platform, has raised $1.2 million in seed funding from numerous angel investors, including Listen Ventures’s Jeff Cantalupo and Mitten Group founder Mark Mitten. More here.

Leesa, a year-old, Virginia Beach, Va.-based online luxury mattress company, has raised $9 million in Series A funding at a post-money valuation of $45 million led by TitleCard Capital. More here.

Mei.com, a China-based flash sales site, has received more than $100 million in fresh funding from Alibaba, reports TechCrunch.

PipelineRx, a six-year-old, San Francisco-based medication management services and platform company focused on clinical telepharmacy, has raised $9.1 million in funding led by Mitsui & Co., with participation from McKesson Ventures and earlier backer AMN Healthcare. More here.

Procept BioRobotics, a six-year-old, Redwood Shores, Ca.-based medical device company whose tool centers on a minimally invasive therapy to remove tissue in the the treatment of lower urinary tract conditions, has raised $42 million in funding led by Novo A/S, with participation from CPMG and others. More here.

Salviol, a six-year-old, London-based anti-fraud and fintech startup, has raised €6.5 million ($7.2 million) in Series A funding led by Orange Growth Capital. More here.

Singapore Post Limited (SingPost), the national postal service provider, has received $206.85 million in fresh funding from Alibaba Holdings, which has increased its stake in the company to 14.5 percent in the process, reports TechCrunch. Alibaba will also invest $67.85 million for a 34 percent stake in SingPost subsidiary Quantium Solutions International, which provides logistics and warehousing solutions to more than 10 countries across Asia Pacific. Forbes has more here.

VideoStitch, a three-year-old, Paris, France-based maker of video editing software, has $2.25 million from Alven Capital. More here.

Wozlla, two-year-old, Beijing, China-based game developer, has raised $2 million investment from Greenwoods Asset Management. More here.

Xiaozhu.com, a Shanghai, China-based home-rental company that competes with Airbnb, has raised $60 million from four private-equity firms: Morningside Venture Capital, Citic Capital Venture Partners, Joy Capital and Magic Stone Alternative. The round values the firm at more than $300 million, it tells the WSJ.

ZeroTurnaround, an eight-year-old, Boston, Ma.-based maker of developer tools for creating software, has raised $5 million in Series B funding led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from Western Technology Investment. Both had backed the company previously. The company has raised $15 million altogether. More here.

Zoomcar, a three-year-old, Bangalore-based self-drive car rental platform, has raised $11 million in fresh funding from Sequoia Capital, Empire Angels, and NGP. The new capital brings its total funding to $22 million. More here.
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New Funds

Investors in Burrill Life Sciences Capital Fund III LP have tapped executives at San Francisco health-care firm Kearny Venture Partners to take on the role of general partner, reports Venture Capital Dispatch. The move comes after they dismantled the fund management team formed under the leadership of G. Steven Burrill. Burill was removed from the fund more than a year ago over unauthorized payments.

Innovation Works, founded by Google China head Kai-Fu Lee, is looking to raise up to $300 million for a new fund, according to an SEC filing first flagged by Venture Capital Dispatch.

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Exits

Capital One has acquired Oakland, Ca.-based Monsoon, a design studio, development shop, marketing house and strategic consultancy for an undisclosed terms. More here.

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People

GoPro is getting more serious about content, seemingly. It just hired Charlotte Koh, who formerly led Hulu’s original content initiatives, in the newly created role of head of features and series. Variety has the story here.

Bill Veghte, incoming CEO of SurveyMonkey, spoke with Bloomberg Television yesterday about his relationship with former CEO Dave Goldberg, saying Goldberg was going to name him to the company’s board the week that he died: “Yes, I had agreed to join the board and was looking forward to helping him and the rest of the board members build out what is I think a really remarkable opportunity.”  Said Veghte of Goldberg: “I remember when he first discovered SurveyMonkey, and he said, Bill, I found this great company that has — it’s a beautiful business that has so much potential in front of it.”

The 22 most important people in Silicon Valley’s enterprise tech scene, per Business Insider.

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Jobs

Visa is looking to add an associate to its corporate development and M&A team. The job is in San Francisco.

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Data

U.S. venture capital firms continue to rake in new capital, according to a new report out this morning from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. According to its data, VCs raised $10.3 billion for 74 funds during the second quarter — an increase of 10 percent over the first quarter and a 39 percent increase by dollar commitments. More here.

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Essential Reads

Apple has asked its suppliers to make a record-breaking number of new iPhones by year end. (Meanwhile, it looks like Apple Watch sales are tanking.)

What Uber can learn from Airbnb‘s global expansion.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has rejected Intellectual Ventures‘s appeal in its case against Capital One, citing “unpatentable abstract ideas.”

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Detours

A man crawled onto a Broadway stage to charge his phone.

Get out the popcorn; the San Francisco version of “Million Dollar Listing” kicks off today on Bravo.

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Retail Therapy

Star Wars cookie cutters.

The Hot Tub Hammock. Eat your heart out, Chris Sacca.

Happy Tuesday, dear readers!

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Top News in the A.M.

SurveyMonkey has a new CEO this morning: It’s former Hewlett-Packard executive Bill Veghte. Recode has the scoop here.

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Eric Vishria on Year One at Benchmark

In July of last year, Eric Vishria, a longtime Opsware executive who became co-founder and CEO of the social browsing startup Rockmelt, joined the Sand Hill Road firm Benchmark as its fifth general partner. It’s an enviable position, given the reputation of the 20-year-old firm, which has backed Uber, Snapchat, and the publicly traded companies Twitter, Hortonworks and Zendesk, among many others.

At Benchmark, which famously sticks to its early-stage knitting, with recent funds all closing at $425 million, general partners also have an equal share in the firm. That’s rather unlike most venture firms, where older partners typically receive outsize economics (and younger partners often hightail it for greener pastures).

That’s not to say the work is easy, exactly. We talked with Vishria yesterday about his first year on the job. Our chat has been edited for length.

How’s it going one year in?

It’s been really amazing. Don’t tell entrepreneurs this, but it’s the best job ever. Every meeting you walk into, you’re learning something. You’re meeting with an entrepreneur, learning about a new space or idea . . . It’s just such an intellectually stimulating job. I find it very inspiring.

How do you keep from getting overly excited about the new ideas you’re seeing? We’d think that would be tricky at first.

I’ve now seen about 180 companies – I track it – and in the first few weeks, I was like, “Oh my God, all of these ideas are investable!” And they weren’t.

More here.

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New Fundings

Bugsnap, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose automated crash-detection platform helps developers quickly see and understand what’s causing “exceptions” to their service, has raised $7.2 million in Series A funding led by Benchmark, with participation from earlier investor Matrix Partners. The company had earlier raised $1.4 million in seed funding. More here.

Doppler Labs, a 1.5-year-old, New York-based maker of volume-reducing earplugs, has raised $17 million in Series B funding led by The Chernin Group,Wildcat Capital Management and Acequia Capital. Other participants in the round include Live National Entertainment, Universal Music Group and WME. TechCrunch has more here.

GlassesGlobalGroup, a two-year-old, Kuala Lumpur-based eyeglass retailer founded by a former Rocket Internet executive, has raised $3 million in Series A funding led by Caixa Capital and Nova Founders Capital, with participation from angel investors. The company has now raised $4.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Harry’s, a 3.5-year-old, New York-based direct-to-consumer men’s razor company, has raised $75.6 million in Series C funding led by Wellington Management. A source tells TechCrunch that the company raised the round at a post-money valuation of $750 million. Harry’s has now raised around $287 million altogether.

Hector Beverages, a six-year-old, New Delhi, India-based maker of beverages for Indian consumers, has raised roughly $28.7 million in Series C funding led by the Belgian investor Sofina and by China’s Hillhouse Capital. Earlier backers Sequoia Capital and Catamaran Ventures also joined the round, which brings the company’s total funding to $36.7 million, shows Crunchbase. The Economic Times has more here.

Hotel Urbano, a three-year-old, Rio de Janerio, Brazil-based hotel search and booking platform, has raised $60 million in strategic funding from the discount travel outfit Priceline Group. The company had previously raised $75 million from Tiger Global Management and Insight Venture Partners.  TechCrunch has more here.

Liases Foras, a 16-year-old, Mumbai, India-based intelligence company focused on regional real estate data (it sells to banks, real estate developers, and government entities, among others), has raised $5 million in funding from Dmgi, the venture capital arm of Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), a publicly traded company. More here.

Saavn, an eight-year-old, New York-based streaming music service for Indian, Bollywood and international content, has raised $100 million in Series C funding led by Tiger Global Management. A spokesperson tells TechCrunch that the round values Saavn at between $300 million and $400 million. More here.

SlimPay, a five-year-old, Paris, France-based payment service provider, has just raised $16.6 million from Prime Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Talent.io, a months-old, Paris-based recruiting company focused on pairing clients with engineering talent, has raised $2.2 million from Alven Capital, Elaia Partners, Ventech, and angel investors, including Thierry Petit of Showroomprive. TechCrunch has more here.

Transifex, a six-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based company whose open-source software helps developers translate websites and apps into multiple languages, has raised $4 million in Series A funding led by Toba Capital, with participation from earlier backers New Enterprise Associates, Arafura Ventures, and angel investors, including Parse founder Ilya Sukhar. The company, originally founded in Athens, Greece, has now raised $6.5 million altogether. More here.

Whipclip, a year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based company whose mobile application lets users quickly and legally share clips from their favorite TV shows and music videos, has raised $40 million in Series C funding led by Eminence Capital, with participation from earlier backers Institutional Venture Partners and Raine Ventures. More here.

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New Funds

Costanoa Venture Capital, a three-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based early stage investor in cloud-based services for businesses and consumers leveraging data and analytics, has closed its second fund with $135 million, bringing its total capital under management to $325 million. Costanoa was founded by Greg Sands, who was previously a longtime managing director at Sutter Hill Ventures. The firm has made four bets from its new fund, including Alation, Apptimize, Bugcrowd, and Directly. (Winter Mead, a senior associate at Sapphire Ventures, talked with Sands recently about the new fund and Sands’s specific approach to VC. You can check that out here.)

Unicorn Capital Partners, a seven-month-old, Hong Kong-based venture firm that apparently aspires to fund billion-dollar companies in China, has raised $12 million in capital committments per an SEC filing flagged by Fortune. More here. The firm is reportedly led by Kah Fai Low, most recently the executive director of Singapore-based Eagle Asia Partners, and Tommy Yip, previously head of North Asia for the private equity fund-of-funds manager Emerald Hill Capital Partners.

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IPOs

So, how serious is that SEC probe of pre-IPO shares?

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People

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is taking a seat on the board ofSurveyMonkey, her late husband’s online survey and polling company, reports the New York Times. Goldberg, who passed away while on vacation in May, spent six years as CEO of SurveyMonkey, which is considered likely to go public soon. The company has also appointed David Ebersman to its board. Ebersman is the co-founder and current CEO of Lyra Health and was previously CFO of Facebook. (As noted in “top news in the a.m.,” the company just named a new CEO, too.)

A look at the “insanely successful life” of Uber‘s billionaire CEO, Travis Kalanick, via Business Insider.

Notable angel investors, per the New York Times.

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Jobs

Lightbank, the venture firm founded by serial entrepreneurs Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, is looking to hire an associate. The job is in Chicago.

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Essential Reads

For startups, how many angels is too many?

Probing the dark side of Google’s ad-targeting program.

The mob’s IT department.

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Detours

Greece’s debt crisis explained.

A world of driverless cars would reduce emissions by 90 percent, says Lawrence Berkeley National Labs.

Loving Lanka.

Evil cat ruins yoga video.

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Retail Therapy

Calvin Klein’s Miami beach house. It can be yours for $16 million (though note, its “Zestimate” is $10.5 million). H/T: Uncrate.

Welcome back, everyone. Hope you had a terrific Fourth of July weekend.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

Google is testing a carpooling service for commuters in Israel.

Apple just filed a new patent that will let people send money to one another directly.

Yesterday, while millions watched the Women’s World Cup, one of the world’s most notorious security firms was being hacked. More here.

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China-Based Firms Backing Out of U.S. Indices? Maybe Not

It’s been a big story of late. As of mid-June, 14 U.S.-traded China-based companies had received buyout offers valued at a collective $22.4 billion, according to Dealogic. The highest profile of the bunch is Internet services provider Qihoo 360, which, several weeks ago, announced it had received a buyout offer led by its chairman and CEO — one that would make it the “largest take-private deal of a U.S.-listed company,” said the WSJ.

The reason for all the take-private talk? China’s stock market, which has roared along for much of this year, thanks to a series of moves by the Chinese government, including cutting benchmark interest rates, reducing stock market transaction fees — even reconsidering its stance on what are called variable interest entity structures, which are used by China-based companies to list in the U.S. and are hard to unwind.

China, in short, wants its companies to come home.

“The government wants to build its own capital markets,” says Glenn Solomon, a managing partner of the cross-border venture firm GGV Capital who we talked with last week. “It wants to see capital stay in China and continue to be invested in China.”

The question is whether companies are smart to listen.

(More on what’s changing fast in China here.)

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New Fundings

23andMe, the nine-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based human genome research company, is raising a giant new round of funding, shows an SEC filingthat says it’s targeting $150 million and has so far raised $79.1 million. The company had previously raised $111.9 million in funding from investors, including Google Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Genentech, Johnson and Johnson, and Yuri Milner. Fortune has more here.

AffinityLive, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based company that helps service businesses via its cloud-based technologies that run sales, projects and billing on the same platform, has raised $2 million in seed funding led by the Australian venture firm Blackbird Ventures, with participation from Rothenberg Ventures and a handful of angels. TechCrunch has more here.

BankBazaar, a seven-year-old, Chennai, India-based startup that helps users compare financial products online, has raised $60 million in Series C funding led by Amazon, with participation from Fidelity Growth Partners, Mousse Partners, and returning investors Sequoia Capital and Walden International. TechCrunch has more here.

Bizzy, a months-old, Jakarta, Indonesia-based business-to-business marketplace, has raised $2.5 million from regional venture firm Ardent Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

CultureAlley, a three-year-old, Jaipur, India-based online language learning platform, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding from Tiger Global Management, with participation from earlier backers Kae Capital and 500 Startups. VCCircle has the story here.

eTouches, a seven-year-old, Norwalk, Ct.-based in-cloud event management software maker, has raised $10 million in new funding shows an SEC filing. The company had previously raised $22 million from investors, including Cava Capital and Greycroft Partners.

HandyHome, a six-month-old, Mumbai, India-based company whose service sounds a bit like that of Geek Squad (the Best Buy subsidiary), has raised $500,000 in seed funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and Kae Capital. More here.

Kuldat, a three-year-old, Boston, Ma.- and Milan, Italy-based maker of marketing and sales software, has raised €1.5 million ($1.7 million) in funding from United Ventures. More here.

Sailsquare, a three-year-old, Milan, Italy-based platform focused on sailing holidays (it presents uses with profiles of skippers, boats, user reviews and a payment platform), has raised €500,000 ($555,700) in seed funding from backers, including Ligurcapital.

Salsify, a nearly three-year-old, Boston, Ma.-based company whose software helps businesses manage the content about their products, has raised $16.6 million in Series B funding led by Venrock, with participation from earlier investors Matrix Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, and investor Michael Skok (formerly of North Bridge). The company has now raised $24.6 million altogether.

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New Funds

The private equity firm Cathay Capital Private Equity has launched Sino-French Innovation Fund, a cross-border investment vehicle that plans to fund start-ups in France and China, and to raise between €200 million to €250 million ($277 million) in funding toward that end. China Money Network has more here.

There’s a new venture fund in town called Crystal Towers, reports TechCrunch. Backed by several early Y Combinator alums, it will start out with between $90 million and $100 million to invest in the most promising companies in every batch of startups to pass through the famed accelerator program. More here.

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Exits

Publicly traded Allergan is acquiring Oculeve, a development-stage medical device company focused on developing treatments for dry eye disease. The purchase price for the all-cash transaction: a $125 million upfront payment, with the possibility of future, milestone payments related to Oculeve’s lead development program. Oculeve had raised at least $32.3 million from investors, shows Crunchbase, including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Associates.

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People

Ratan Tata, the famed chairman emeritus of the software conglomerate Tata Sons, has joined the Singapore-based venture firm Jungle Ventures as a special advisor just a few weeks after accepting a similar role with the firm Kalaari Capital in Bangalore, India. The Economic Times has the story here.

Industry observers seem convinced anew that the responsibilities of Jony Ive, Apple‘s newly appointed Chief Design Officer, are shrinking — not growing. More here.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers gives Business Insider a peek into its “thrilling” summer internship program.

Pejman Mar Ventures, the seed-stage fund, is launching a $250,000 startup competition. Any student, faculty or alum of UC Berkeley can win it. More here.

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Jobs

Cisco Investments is looking to add an associate. The job is in San Jose.

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Essential Reads

Securities regulators have launched a broad investigation into whether hedge funds and other investors are improperly selling hot private technology stocks,reports the WSJ.

Can Lyft pull an Avis?

Barron’s takes readers inside Legacy Venture, a Silicon Valley-based fund-of-funds with $1 billion under management that funnels investors’ original capital, along with any profits earned, into their favorite causes and charities. Though Barron’s dubs it “high-risk” philanthropy, its performance sounds pretty strong, with holdings that include low-cost stakes in Uber, Airbnb and Dropbox.

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Detours

Before there was Wired, there was Mondo 2000.

The science of Pixar’s “Inside Out.”

Reviving a masterwork.

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Retail Therapy

The smallest GoPro yet.

Coloring books for adults.

When Mister Whiskers deserves the very best.

Hi, everyone! Happy first day of July.:)

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Top News in the A.M.

According to famed investor Steve Jurvetson (who is speaking at our September 16 event!), Google may be more serious about competing directly with Uber than it let on earlier this year when it dismissed a Bloomberg Business report that it had developed a commercial ride-share app. In fact, on Bloomberg TV yesterday, Jurvetson suggested that Google could end up undercutting Uber’s revenue by offering a service for free. “Google may very well beat them at their own game because they can get down to zero. They can take zero cut and offer a free app, which they are considering launching, called Free Ride, so this game could get very interesting,” he said. “They are considering it, they’re debating it. They’re on the fence as to whether they should offer it, but the go-to-market would be: Offer the free app, get people used to it while there are still human drivers and then flip them over to the Google autonomous cars.” Business Insider caught the exchange (and has the clip) here. Google — which invested $258 million in Uber in 2013 — isn’t responding to media inquiries for more information.

According to the (reliably accurate) blog 9to5Mac, the new iPhone 6S, expected to be announced this fall, looks pretty much exactly like the iPhone 6, but it will feature some “major internal changes.” More here.

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A Stanford Dean on the Danger of Overparenting By Parents, and Startups

In her new book, “How to Raise an Adult,” former Stanford University Dean of Freshmen Julie Lythcott-Haims argues that overparenting has grown to worrying extremes over the last decade-plus and that unchecked, it will be the ruin of society as we know it.

She noticed it in her own parenting, in fact. “There was a time when I was a finger-wagging dean, then realized: I’m still cutting my kids’ own meat, and they’re 8 and 10. I’m not judgmental, but I got this wonderful glimpse into the future where when too much is done for children, it makes them less capable.”

In conversation with this reporter, Lythcott-Haims explained how startups that similarly coddle their workers –- for the sake of making them more productive – aren’t helping things much, either.

You were at Stanford a long while. At what point did you think: It’s weird how involved all these parents have become?

I began to see it more and more over time – parents who were coming to the university with their sons and daughters and sticking around, sometimes literally and often virtually. I found it bewildering. My own experience as a student in the ‘80s didn’t include much involvement from my parents at all, and I began wondering what if my parents had been expected to register for my courses, settle roommate disputes, talk with my professors about my grades. Not that long ago, 18- to 20-year-olds had the capacity to do those things for themselves, and now, they seemed not to.

(You can read the rest of our chat here in TechCrunch.)

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New Fundings

Chrome River Technologies, an eight-year-old, L.A.-based maker of online expense reporting and automated invoice processing software, has raised $100 million in Series D funding from Great Hill Partners. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Rocket Internet’s Global Fashion Group, a 10-month-old, Berlin-based umbrella group that includes Rocket Internet’s fashion-focused e-commerce services for emerging markets, has raised a fresh €150 million ($167 million) in funding, at a valuation of  €2.8 billion ($3 billion). The money comes from earlier backers Kinnevik, the Stockholm, Sweden-based investment group, and Rocket Internet itself, which now reportedly owns 24.2 percent of the company. TechCrunch has more here.

Kentik, a year-old, San Francisco-based cloud-based networking analytics company, has raised $12.1 million in Series A funding led by August Capital, with participation from First Round Capital and Data Collective. TechCrunch has more here.

MangoPlate, a two-year-old, Seoul-based service akin to Yelp in Korea, has raised $6.1 million in Series A funding led by Qualcomm Ventures, with participation from SoftBank Ventures Korea and YJ Capital, a venture capital firm established by Yahoo Japan. The company has now raised $7.2 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Nativo, a five-year-old, El Segundo, Ca.-based company that enables online publishers to deploy and manage native ad placements across the Web, has raised $20 million in new funding led by Advance Vixeid Partners. Nativo had previously raised $11.2 million. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Pneuron, a five-year-old, Nashua, N.H.-based company whose platform is used by organizations wanting to leverage their existing systems and infrastructure to connect data, applications, processes, and analytics, has raised $5 million in Series B-1 funding led by Safeguard Scientifics, with participation from Osage Partners and Scott Group. The company has now raised $13.2 million altogether. More here.

PubNub, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based data stream network for mobile applications and connected devices (it helps its customers scale and manage their applications), has raised $20 million in Series C funding led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Relay Ventures and Scale Venture Partners. According to Crunchbase, the company has now raised $35 million altogether.

RadiumOne, a six-year-old, San Francisco, Ca.-based company that makes programmatic marketing automation software, has raised $54 million in equity and debt funding. The round was led by Harmony Partners, with participation from Industry Ventures and earlier backers Adams Street Partners, Crosslink Capital, Trinity Ventures, and DFJ Esprit. The company has now raised $87.5 million altogether, shows Crunchbase. Business Insider has more here.

ScoreBeyond, a 2.5-year-old service that helps students prepare for standardized tests like the SAT, has raised $2.8 million in funding led by Khosla Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

SeeClickFix, a 6.5-year-old, New Haven, Ct.-based company whose platform helps citizens to report and monitor non-emergency issues in their local communities, has raised $1.6 million in funding led by Elm Street Ventures, with participation from earlier backers O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Omidyar Network, as well as new investors Connecticut Innovations and LaunchCapital.

Shapeways, an eight-year-old, New York-based 3D printing marketplace, has raised $30 million in funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Lux Capital, INKEF Capital, and Hewlett-Packard. Business Insider hasmore here.

SkyKick, a 3.5-year-old. Seattle, Wa.-based cloud management software company, has raised $10 million in funding from investors, including Navin Thukkaram, Tim Ferriss, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, and several (unnamed) strategic private equity investors. The company has now raised $17.2 million altogether.

Smartspot, a seven-month-old, New York-based computer-vision company whose smart mirror for gyms monitors a person’s workout and ensures he or she is training correctly, has raised $1.85 million in funding from from Khosla Ventures and Signalfire. TechCrunch has more here.

Sweetgreen, an eight-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based farm-to-table chain of restaurants that prepare healthy and affordable salads, has raised $35 million in new funding led by T. Rowe Price, with participation from prior investor Revolution Growth. The company has now raised $95 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Trucker Path, a 1.5-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based marketplace that connects shippers and truckers who are available to move their cargo, has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Wicklow Capital of Chicago, with participation from China’s Renren. TechCrunch has more here.

Unikrn, a 10-month-old, Seattle-based gaming startup that’s focused on e-sports betting, has raised $7 million in funding led by Binary Capital. The company has now raised $10 million altogether, incuding from Mark Cuban, Advancit Capital, Freelands Group, 500 Startups, Indicator Ventures and Tabcorp. Gamer Network has more here.

Venafi, an 11-year-old, Salt Lake City, Ut.-based encryption key and security certificate manager, has raised $39 million in funding from Intel Capital, QuestMark Partners, and Silver Lake Waterman. The company has now raised $55 million altogether, shows Crunchbase. VentureBeat has more here.

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New Funds

Adam Hopkins, who has spent the last 11 years at Elevation Partners, including as a managing director (he joined as a principal, coming out of Silver Lake Partners), has created a new firm with Fred Anderson, a former Apple exec who cofounded Elevation. According to an SEC filing, the firm is called NextEquity Partners. It’s based in Menlo Park, Ca. And it’s not saying how much it’s raising.

Allegis Capital, a 19-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based early-stage venture firm, has closed on $100 million toward a $150 million fund, it tells Venture Capital Dispatch. It also says that, more than ever, it will be investing its capital in cybersecurity startups. More here.

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Exits

Adam Hopkins, who has spent the last 11 years at Elevation Partners, including as a managing director (he joined as a principal, coming out of Silver Lake Partners), has created a new firm with Fred Anderson, a former Apple exec who cofounded Elevation. According to an SEC filing, the firm is called NextEquity Partners. It’s based in Menlo Park, Ca. And it’s not saying how much it’s raising.

Allegis Capital, a 19-year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based early-stage venture firm, has closed on $100 million toward a $150 million fund, it tells Venture Capital Dispatch. It also says that, more than ever, it will be investing its capital in cybersecurity startups. More here.

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People

In his last day at Twitter yesterday, outgoing CEO Dick Costolo said he underestimated the pressures that going public would place on the company and warned that things will only grow harder for his successor. More here, in the Guardian.

Hello, dear readers, and happy Tuesday!

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Top News in the A.M.

Uber is telling prospective investors that it generates $470 million in operating losses on $415 million in revenue, according to a document obtained yesterday by Bloomberg. That Uber is spending so much on growth isn’t a complete shock. More concerning, perhaps, is that rival apps in other parts of the world, like Ola Cabs and GrabTaxi, are “in some cases beating Uber by a ratio of four to one, in terms of app installs,” reports the Information. (Subscribers only.)

Yikes. A two-tier internet will be created in Europe as the result of a late-night “compromise” between the European Commission, European Parliament and the EU Council. More here.

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VC David Cowan in Betting on Space (and Counting on Space Travel)

This morning, Spire, a nearly three-year-old, San Francisco-based maker of small, software-packed satellites, announced $40 million in fresh funding from investors, including Promus Ventures, which led the round, and Bessemer Venture Partners. (We wrote a piece for TechCrunch about the news here.)

Late last week, we talked with Bessemer partner David Cowan about the deal, and why he’s intrigued by space startups more broadly. That conversation follows, edited for length and clarity.

How did you settle on your investment in Spire?

As an early investor in Skybox [a satellite imagery companyacquired by Google last year], we were approached by pretty much every early-stage space startup out there. Back when Spire was called NanoSatisfi, [founder] Peter [Platzer] reached out to us, but the company looked as flaky as the rest of them, meaning, here was a smart guy with an ambitious idea that he was going to put up a big constellation. But after one-and-a-half years, he actually did all the things he said he was going to do. In fact, when we looked to find who might be taking advantage of Moore’s Law in space, Spire stood out as the company most likely to lead the trend. It’s pretty clear that by this time next year, Spire will have the largest constellation known to man [based on the number of satellites it has in space].

Right now, that honor belongs to Iridium, which has around 75 satellites up there. Give readers a sense of how different the two companies’ satellites are. 

Iridium’s satellites are on the order of a metric ton, whereas satellites now being developed are basically 10-centimeter cubes, so maybe the size of a Kleenex tissue box. Spire’s satellites amount to three of those cubes [each].

How dramatically do they compare in terms of power?

It’s a different class. Iridium satellites are high-capacity and high-powered, but they cost a lot of money and time to build and launch. This new generation of satellites is so small and cheap that you can basically make them out of cell phone parts, with the camera and radios and GPS that goes into them. They aren’t space-hardened. Solar flares and other stuff in space [take a toll much faster]. But you aren’t looking to get 12 years out of them. You’re looking to get two or three. It’s a different attitude. You sprinkle them out there. You’re constantly changing them and tweaking them. It’s like comparing a network of mobile devices with a mainframe.

Who are Spire’s biggest customers?

The first two major applications that we’re addressing are marine craft tracking via the AIS beacons that ships have when they’re out in the open sea; the second is weather. Starting a year from now, it’s expected that the U.S. will be blind to the weather — that the [three] satellites [the government has been relying on] will no longer be functioning. As you can imagine, it’s imperative that we have weather data. It’s critical to agriculture, critical to national security, critical to understanding climate change.

To date, the government has had its own satellites to produce this data, but there’s generally a movement to outsource more and more in the industry. It’s why SpaceX has received a mandate to carry astronauts [encouraged by NASA]. Congress is saying the same about other formerly proprietary NASA activities, too, including authorizing the government to buy weather data.

It sounds like Spire has other ambitions, too.

We’re not satisfied to just do the weather. It’s a big market but there’s no reason that, once the satellites are out there, we can’t put more antennae on them and [wring more information] out them. There’s been a lot of awareness in the last couple of years that we have aircraft disappearing off the grid, for example. There are currently satellites in space that talk with airplanes when they’re underneath those satellites, but there aren’t satellites tracking flights going over the North Pole; a system with lots of little satellites that blanket the planet [could solve that problem].

Basically, there are no application-specific satellites any more. It’s like the internet, where the same pipes that are carrying this call also carry email and Netflix and so much more.

Hi, everyone, welcome back and happy Monday!

A quick note for readers who may missed the news last week: We are super excited to be hosting our next event in San Francisco on Wednesday evening, September 16, at the Autodesk Gallery on Market Street, thanks to some finagling by our friends at Bolt. We’re just as excited about who will be speaking, including DFJ cofounder Steve Jurvetson; Social+Capital Partnership founder Chamath Palihapitiya; True Ventures partner and About.me CEO Tony Conrad; Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Automattic; Bolt managing director Ben Einstein; and Haystack founder Semil Shah. You can find more information about the event right here. Tickets, which are going fast, are here.

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Top News in the A.M.

The French police aren’t messing around. Uber France CEO Thibaud Simphal and Uber Europe GM Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty were both taken into custody today in Paris and charged with running an illegal taxi company. More here from TechCrunch.

This morning, the Supreme Court opted not to review a 2014 ruling on copyright law that held Google‘s Android operating system infringed copyrights relating to Oracle‘s Java platform. This is a disaster for the software industry, argues Vox. Here’s why.

Owing to investor demand, it now looks like the China-based ride-sharing company Didi Kuaidi is targeting around $2 billion (up from $1.5 billion) for its newest fundraise. The WSJ has more here.

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Piazza, Backed by Sequoia and Others, Looks to Next Round

Glorious Friday, we meet again. Hope you have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Historic day: Same-sex marriage is a right, the Supreme Court ruled this morning.

Airbnb, the seven-year-old, San Francisco-based online home-rental marketplace, is reportedly closing in on $1.5 billion in fresh capital that would value the company at a whopping $24 billion. According to the Financial Times, the round is being led by General Atlantic; the Beijing-based investment management firm Hillhouse Capital; and Tiger Global Management. Others involved in the round reportedly include Baillie Gifford, Wellington Management, and earlier backers Fidelity and T. Rowe Price. More here.

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For Potential Recruits, VC is So 1999

There’s a lot to love about being a venture capitalist. You meet with smart people every day. You make money regardless of whether or not your investments work. People assume you have smart opinions about things.

Strange as it may seem, however, a growing number of illuminati are passing up the chance to work with established firms to do their own thing. Among the newest of them: Avidan Ross, a former private investment company CTO turned angel investor, who says he met with a number of firms about tie-ups before setting out to raise his own, $31.4 million fund from mostly high-net-worth individuals. (We reported on its closing earlier this month.)

Why would anyone pass up the chance to land a plum role with a venture firm that’s managing hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars? The overarching reason, of course, is that they can.

Often, such potential recruits have already made enough money to gamble on themselves. See Aydin Sekut of Felicis Ventures, Manu Kumar of K9 Ventures and dozens of other individuals who’ve turned themselves into venture capitalists over the last decade.

It’s also easier than ever for those who haven’t yet made their fortune to raise a fund, particularly given widening interest in getting into startup deals. Venture capitalist Niko Bonatsos works for General Catalyst Partners but sees many of his peers taking alternative paths. As he puts it, “If someone can [raise and] invest $30 million or $40 million themselves, why wouldn’t they do that? It’s like, ‘You’re a young guy, you know founders. Here’s $10 million. Go invest it.”

For more on our story this morning, check out it out here on TechCrunch.

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New Fundings

24M, a five-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company whose lithium-ion cell promises to dramatically reduce manufacturing and materials costs, has raised $50 million in financing from undisclosed backers, along with a $4.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. The WSJ has more here.

Andela, a year-old, New York-based accelerator that helps educate developers and connect them with employers, has reportedly raised “well over $10 million” in Series A funding led by Spark Capital, with participation from earlier investors Omidyar Network and Learn Capital. TechCrunch has much more here.

BankerBay, a 2.5-year-old, New York-based ideal origination platform that connects institutional investors with qualified investment opportunities, has raised more than $2 million in seed funding from ScaleVC and individual investors. More here.

Brazen, an eight-year-old, Arlington, Va.-based online engagement platform that allows organizations to schedule and host chat-based online meetups and events to engage a wide variety of audiences, has raised $4.7 million in funding led by Osage Venture Partners, with participation fromRandstad Innovation Fund, Militello Capital and Kegonsa Capital Partners. The company has now raised just more than $10 million altogether.

Celect, a 2.5-year-old, Boston-based company whose machine-learning technology helps retailers select and distribute their products in ways that reflect buying patterns, has raised $5 million in Series A funding led by August Capital, with participation from Activant Capital Group. VentureBeat hasmore here.

Eargo, a five-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company whose new hearing devices are modeled on a fishing fly and are nearly invisible when placed in the ear canal, has raised $13 million in Series A funding led by Maveron, with participation from Dolby Family Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Birchmere Ventures and others. GeekWire has more here.

Guavus, a nine-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based big data analytics company, has $30 million in funding from earlier backers. The company has now raised roughly $130 million altogether, including from Artiman Ventures, Sofinnova Ventures, Intel Capital, SingTel Innov8, Investor Growth Capital, QuestMark Partners and Goldman Sachs. More here.

Lyra Health, a six-month-old, Burlingame, Ca.-based company aiming to help employers and health plans better manage populations of people with behavioral-health illnesses, has raised $3.1 million in strategic funding from Castlight Health. More here.

OneWeb, a three-year-old, London-based company that plans to launch a constellation of satellites to provide affordable high-speed internet, has raised $500 million in funding from Airbus Group, Bharti Enterprises, Hughes Network Systems, EchoStar Corp., Intelsat, Qualcomm, The Coca-Cola Company, Virgin Group, and Mexico’s Grupo Salinas. Reuters has more here.

PayRange, a two-year-old, Portland, Or.-headquartered company whose tools enable machines to accept card and digital payments, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Matrix Partners.

Postmates, the three-year-old, San Francisco-based urban delivery platform, has raised $80 million in new funding at a more than $400 million valuation led by Tiger Global Management. Earlier backer Slow Ventures also joined the round, chipping in $5 million via a special purpose vehicle that enabled its own limited partners to invest in the company. The WSJ has the scoop here.

Redis Labs, a four-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company that offers enterprise-grade services around the open-source NoSQL Redis database and memcached object caching system, has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Bain Capital Ventures and Carmel Ventures, with participation from Silicon Valley Bank. The company, formerly known as Garantia, has now raised $28 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Sebacia, a five-year-old, Duluth, Ga.-based company that makes an acne treatment that must be administered by dermatologists, has raised $22 million in Series C funding comprised of $10 million in debt financing from Square 1 Bank and $12 million in equity from earlier backers Accuitive Medical Ventures, Domain Associates, Partners Innovation Fund and Versant Ventures. The company has now raised $55.6 million, shows Crunchbase.

ShopJester, a year-old, Danville, Ca.-based mobile retail app that allows shoppers to search for producs from 32 different retailers and segregates the items into “sales,” “new arrivals,” and more, has raised $600,000 in seed funding from numerous investors, including Roger Smith, former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank.

Stand, a year-old, San Francisco, Ca.-based mobile app that connects users with people who might inspire their own personal philanthropy, has raised $2.25 million in funding led by Resolute Ventures, with participation from Greylock Partners, Fresco Capital and entrepreneur Jack Dorsey, along with many other individual investors. More here.

Tesora, a 4.5-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company that’s developing and supporting OpenStack Trove, a system for managing database capacity in an on-demand way, has raised $4.5 million in funding from backers, including Rho Canada Ventures and earlier backers General Catalyst Partners, CommonAngels, and Point Judith Capital. Xconomy has more here.

WeWork, a five-year-old, New York-based company whose main business is renting office space from landlords, then building it out into an incubator-like spaces and renting to startups, has raised a fresh $400 million led by Fidelity Management & Research at a $10 billion valuation. (As the WSJ notes, WeWork leases about 3.5 million square feet of space globally, yet its valuation is now nearly half that of Boston Properties, a $19 billion company that owns 45 million square feet of real estate.) Other participants in the round include earlier backers J.P. Morgan, Harvard Corp., Benchmark, T. Rowe Price, Goldman Sachs, Wellington Management and Mort Zuckerman.

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New Funds

137 Ventures, a 4.5-year-old, San Francisco-based firm that provides startup employees with loans in exchange for their equity, is looking to raise $200 million for its third fund, shows an SEC filing. The company closed its second fund with $137 million almost exactly a year ago. Its first, $50 million, fund closed in 2011.

Formation 8, the three-year-old, San Franciso-based venture-capital firm known for backing virtual-reality company Oculus VR, has filed to raise a $400 million fund for late-stage investments in Asia, reports Reuters. Called F8 Asia Growth, the average size investment the fund will make is roughly $50 million, a person tells the outlet.

Grotech Ventures, a 31-year-old, Vienna, Va.-based venture firm, is looking to raise $200 million for its newest fund, shows an SEC filing that states the fund’s first sale has yet to occur.

Russian investment firm Target Ventures has opened an office in San Francisco as it seeks to diversify its portfolio of consumer Internet startups, reports VentureWire. The firm is reportedly looking to invest in Series B, C and later rounds and can commit anywhere from $1 million to $30 million in companies.

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IPOs

Sunrun, an eight-year-old, San Francisco-based residential solar energy company, has filed for a $100 million IPO. The company has raised roughly $680 million in debt and equity over the years, shows Crunchbase. According toits S-1, its biggest shareholders include Foundation Capital, which owns 19.7 percent of the company; Accel Partners, which owns 13.2 percent; Canyon Partners, which owns 9.1 percent; Sequoia Capital, which owns 9 percent; and Madrone Partners, which owns 7.5 percent.

Sophos, the 30-year-old, Abingdon, England-based security company that makes antivirus software, firewall hardware and other products for networks, individual users and servers, went public on the London Stock Exchange earlier today, with plans to raise $125 million on a valuation of £1.013 billion ($1.6 billion). It is the the latest tech “unicorn” to come out of the UK, notes TechCrunch.

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Exits

Deliv, a three-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based same-day delivery company, has acquired WeDeliver, a 2.5-year-old, Chicago-based provider of same-day delivery for local merchants. Financial terms of the deal weren’t announced. Deliv has raised $12.4 million from investors, including Westfield Labs, Upfront Ventures, and Redpoint Ventures. WeDeliver had raised $800,000 in seed funding, including from Jumpstart Ventures.

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People

Facebook released its annual diversity numbers yesterday and they look much the same as the year earlier. In May of 2013, Facebook was 69 percent male and 57 percent white. As of June 2014, it was 68 percent male and 55 white.

Deutsche Bank has started a new group dedicated to private fundraising, reports the WSJ. The group, called Private Growth Capital, will work with the bank’s existing venture-capital coverage bankers and private-wealth management, advising both companies seeking to raise capital and investors looking to jump into deals.

Bill Gates reckons he has already dropped a cool $1 billion on investments in renewable energy technologies. Now he’s looking to double that. More here.

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Jobs

Saints Capital in San Francisco is looking for an analyst.

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Essential Reads

Google has quietly launched a GitHub competitor.

—–

Detours

What type of introvert are you?

How having an unethical boss can make you look bad, too.

Someone is renting out a Coleman tent in the backyard of his parent’s Mountain View, Ca., home for $899 a month or $49 per day (a scary sign of the times if ever there was one!).

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Retail Therapy

Wireless headset.

Instant photo coasters. (We love these.)

Hello and happy Thursday, everyone! Lots of fundings today.

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Top News in the A.M.

Amazon just announced three initiatives to support its cloud-based intelligent Alexa voice service and the Amazon Echo, a wireless speaker that can respond to basic voice commands. One of those initiatives involves a software development kit. The other: A $100 million fund to back engineers focused on building experiences around human speech. More here.

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LittleBits Raises $44.2 Million to Get Its Little Bits Into More Hands

If you work in tech and have or know young children, you’ve likely heard of LittleBits, a 3.5-year-old, venture-backed maker of electronic components that are sold via kits and snap together to create everything from toy robots to synthesizers and more.

Today, the New York company is getting serious about ensuring its modular pieces make their way into the hands of many more people. Toward that end, it’s announcing $44.2 million in Series B funding led by DFJ Growth, with participation from Morgan Stanley, Alternative Investment Partners, Grishin Robotics and Wamda Capital. (Foundry Group, True Ventures, VegasTechFund, Two Sigma Ventures, and Khosla Ventures  — earlier investors that had provided the company with $15.6 million in previous funding — also joined the round.)

Educators, who have been discovering LittleBits, are about to become one big area of focus for the 90-person, New York-based company. Already, LittleBits are being used in 2,100 schools in 70 countries, says LittleBits’s founder and CEO, Ayah Bdeir, who says that while LittleBits has a “good footprint” in California particularly, the company is looking to add to that momentum nationally and internationally by adding employees in sales and distribution.

LittleBits is also going after more corporate customers. Indeed, according to Bdeir, companies like Salesforce, Twilio, and SAP have — in the last year, entirely on their own — begun employing LittleBits in creativity workshops and in the prototyping of their various products, including those centered on the Internet of Things. (Part of the attraction: Last year, LittleBits introduced a “cloudBit” device that allows users to add a variety of things to their connected home via LittleBits hardware and a companion app. It has since introduced many other related modules that make it easier to play around with popular connected devices as well as invent new ones.)

Of course, parents and others interested in providing children with an easy way to understand electronics also remain a big target for the company, which currently sells its products through its own site and Amazon, but plans to slowly grow its number of retailing partners starting with Barnes & Noble, which will begin selling LittleBits kits later this year.

As for sales to date, the company isn’t disclosing numbers but says it has been growing “three to four times revenue” annually and that it has sold “millions of units” (meaning pieces, not kits) in more than 100 countries.

It also says a subscription model may be on the horizon. “People have been asking for it a lot,” says Bdeir. “It’s something we want to develop.”

(For more on LittleBits and its newest funding, you can check out our TechCrunch piece here.)

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New Fundings

Automatic, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based connected car platform, has raised $24 million in Series B funding led by the investment arm at USAA, a insurance and financial services provider for military families. CDK Global and Comcast Ventures also participated in the round, alongside earlier backers Y Combinator, RPM Ventures, Anthemis Group, Amicus Capital and numerous angel investors. Automatic has now raised $32 million in total. TechCrunch has more here.

Autonomic Technologies, an eight-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based maker of a microstimulator that treats severe headaches, has added another $5.5 million from HBM Healthcare Investments to its Series D round, which is closing with a total of $43.2 million. The round was led by Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners, with participation from Forbion Capital Partners and earlier backers Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, InterWest Partners, Aberdare Ventures, Novatis Venture Funds, and the Cleveland Clinic. More here.

Bento, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based on-demand food delivery service focused around Asian food, has raised $1.5 million led by LAUNCH Fund, with participation from Slow Ventures, 500 Startups, FundersClub and numerous angel investors. TechCrunch has more here.

BitSight Technologies, a four-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based security ratings company that helps enterprises monitor the risk posed by vendors in their supply chain, has raised $23 million in Series B funding from Comcast Ventures, along with earlier backers Globespan Capital Partners, Menlo Ventures, Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Shaun McConnon and Flybridge Capital Partners. The company has now raised $49 million altogether.

Bricoprivé, a 2.5-year-old, Toulouse, France-based online retailer focused on DIY, gardening and home improvement products, has raised €2.5 million ($2.8 million) from the Paris-based investement company Ardian, following the partial exit of Bricoprivé’s previous minority shareholders. More here.

Checkmarx, a nine-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based software application security company that sells application security testing and application layer attack prevention services, has raised $84 million from Insight Venture Partners. Reuters has more here.

Conga, a nine-year-old, Broomfield, Co.-based developer of a set of document generation and reporting applications for Salesforce, has raised $70 million in funding from Insight Venture Partners. Denver Business Journal has more here.

Curbside, a nearly two year-old, Palo Alto, Ca.-based startup whose mobile app allows shoppers to buy from local retailers like Target and Best Buy then pick up items at stores without exiting their car, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Sutter Hill Ventures, with participation from earlier backers Index Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures and others. The company has now raised $34.5 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Highland Therapeutics, a seven-year-old Toronto, Canada-based pharmaceutical company that tries optimizing the delivery of previously approved drug products, has raised $50 million in funding, half of which came in the form of equity from Eastern Capital Limited, and half of which it secured through a credit facility provided by Citibank. More here.

Inspirock, a three-year-old, East Palo Alto, Ca.-based company whose site creates customized travel itineraries for users, has raised $3 million in funding from earier investor MakeMyTrip, one of India’s largest travel booking sites; angel investors; and its founders, Anoop Goyal and Prakash Sikchi.

Lost My Name, a two-year-old, London-based publishing startup focused on kids’ personalized publishing and entertainment, has raised $9 million in Series A funding from Google Ventures, Greycroft Partners, The Chernin Group, Allen & Co., and former SunGard president and CEO Cris Conde. More here.

Matterport, a 4.5-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based company that makes a $4,500 camera capable of capturing an environment in 360 degrees, has raised $30 million in growth funding from Qualcomm Ventures and Singapore’s GIC. VentureBeat has more here.

Qwilt, a five-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based maker of networking equipment that helps service providers manage the demand for internet video, has raised $25 million in Series D funding led by Disrupt-ive, with participation from Innovation Endeavors and Cisco Investments. The company has now raised $65 million to date. Recode has more here.

Radiant Entertainment, a new PC games studio, has raised $4.5 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners and London Venture Partners. Venture Capital Dispatch has much more here.

TextMaster, the four-year-old, Belgium-based startup that offers a platform for content translation, copywriting and proofreading, has raised $5 million in funding from Serena Capital, with participation from earlier backer Alven Capital. The company has now raised $8 million altogether. TechCrunch hasmore here.

Topia Technology, a 16-year-old, Tacoma, Wa.-based data security platform, has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding from private angel investors in the Pacific Northwest.