VC watch: Interwise grabs $34 million
Interwise raises $34 million...WildCard Systems gets $14.5 million...Flarion picks up $45 million.
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Monday's deals
• Interwise raised a $34 million third round of funding, led by Accenture Technology Ventures, Lazard Technology Ventures and UBS Capital. Other investors included GIMV, Leeds Equity Partners and Jim Manzi, the former chief executive of Lotus Development. With his investment, Manzi will become a nonexecutive chairman of the board. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Interwise has raised a total of $70 million. The company develops software designed to allow real-time video, audio and data communications over the Internet, such as Web meetings and Webcasting.
• WildCard Systems has raised a $14.5 million fifth round of funding, led by Sutter Hill Ventures. Other investors included WW Ventures and Cleveland Pacific Equity Ventures. Sunrise, Fla.-based WildCard Systems has raised a total of $53 million. The company develops software that creates and stores financial services information, similar to the technology that is used for prepaid phone cards, which stores information on available phone minutes and then registers a debit as the card is used.
• Flarion raised $45 million for its second round of funding led by Pequot Capital, along with new investors Cisco Systems and Nassau Capital. The maker of wireless Internet access technology, spun off from Lucent Technologies in July 2000, closed its $12.5 million first round with investments from Bessemer Venture Partners, Charles River Ventures, Pequot and Lucent. Flarion is working on software and chip designs for wireless Internet access that it will license to wireless equipment companies and telecom carriers. The technology will allow carriers to maintain a network that gives people access to the Internet wirelessly from laptops or handheld computers at average speeds ranging between 1.5 mbps (megabits per second) to 0.6 mbps, about as fast as DSL (digital subscriber line) technology. Flarion will start trials for its technology by the end of 2001 and expects to ship its products in the second half of 2002.