Arch Rock, a fellow spin-out from the University of California, has raised their second round of funding. Arch Rock was founded by David Culler, the adviser of Rob Szewczyk and I while at UC Berkeley, and Wei Hong, a co-worker of ours from Intel Research. A number of other great UC Berkeley alumni are now at Arch Rock too.
The funding announcement comes at the end of an 8-month drought of venture investment in wireless sensor networking companies. A couple of other WSN companies are now out searching for venture capital. The Arch Rock investment shows a commitment by investors to the potential of wireless sensing and validates the necessity of other players in the WSN ecosystem.
Arch Rock is best known for their use of IP to connect from Internet networks to wireless sensor networks. Their solution eases the inter-networking of these systems, allowing users to run commands like 'ping', 'traceroute', and web services interfaces from a central gateway node. They also have spiffy webpages to access each sensor node. The system is built using TinyOS, to which both Arch Rock and Moteiv are active contributors.
The $10m Series B round supports the company's R&D product roadmap as well as sales and marketing according to the press release. The round was an internal round, with all of the Series A participants involved--NEA, Shasta, and Intel Capital. Arch Rock has raised $15m total to date.
Arch Rock's Primer Pack/IP is now shipping, which is a development kit to get started with Arch Rock's inter-networking suite. With $10m in the bank, we're excited that Arch Rock is a Moteiv customer and wish them the best of luck.
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Our good friends over at Tendril have completed their Series B round ($5.25m) and have hired Adrian Tuck, former VP at Ember, to be their new CEO. Tim Enwall, their former CEO, will now be COO. Tim is a Cal alumni and friend of Moteiv.
http://www.wirelessweek.com/article/CA6360555.html
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MaxStream, makers of 900MHz and 2.4GHz wireless RF modules, has been acquired for $38.5 million by Digi International. Digi makes embedded consoles and devices, and MaxStream seems to be a natural fit. The deal was split half cash and half stock. Based in Lindon, Utah and employing 49 people, MaxStream generated $10.4 million in revenue and $1.3 million in net income, or 12.7% of revenue, in the year ending December 31, 2005. Digi trades with ticker DGII on Nasdaq.
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Open-source venture funding is up, some estimate close to $180m invested in open-source companies in 2005. For some reference, current estimates are $22b in venture funding in 2005 with about $5b invested in software companies.
http://news.com.com/Open+source,+open+wallet/2100-7344_3-5934144.html
Some folks are now questioning the open source "bubble", arguing that a $15m series-A to an open source company is probably a little excessive.
The trend is so popular, that there is now an open source venture fund.
A funny quote:
Frank Catalano joked that he had discovered at least one way to make money in the burgeoning open source movement. The technology guru, who was moderating a panel discussion on the topic, then held up a brochure from a law firm that was marketing seminars on open source software.