Germantown-Based CURRENT Raises $13 Million, Picks Willie as New CEO

Germantown, Maryland – CURRENT, provider of core smart grid infrastructure and software solutions has raised $13m in venture capital funding from a group of international investors and promoted Tom Willie as the new chief executive and President of the company.

The venture capital firms involved in the funding were the  new investors Business Media China and Espírito Santo Ventures, and were backed up by existing investors Associated Partners, EnerTech Capital and Goldman Sachs. CURRENT plans to use the new funding to accelerate product development and continue to expand in the European and Asia Pacific markets. The company will also be hiring new employees in the field of engineering and technical computing.

Tom Willie, who previously works as the Product Chief Officer  replaces former CEO Tom Casey, who in February left the company to take a position  as chief executive of Integra Telecom in February. Another notable addition is the former Ocular Inc. Chief Financial Officer John Du  joined Current as the new CFO.

The seed funding announcement is on time with the GridWeek conference in the Washington area which brought positive impact to the company and give them a more visibility with their grid product in the market.

Visit Current’s Website for more information.

http://www.currentgrid.com/

LivingSocial Sets Record With Whole Foods Offer

Washinton, DC –  LivingSocial, the DC-based daily deal site has set a  new record as the fastest selling deal ever when its  $20 worth of Whole Foods groceries voucher for $10 became an internet craze last Tuesday. LivingSocial launched the deal in  5:00 a.m. and by 3:00 p.m., 800,000 vouchers were sold and by evening all 1 million vouchers available were sold out.

The first-ever nationwide grocery deal for LivingSocial set a record for the site. LivingSocial officials said they were selling about 115,000 an hour, which company spokesman Andrew Weinstein said was its fastest-selling offer. The deal was the first time for the natural food chain in doing an online deal that is nationwide with LivingSocial. The Austin-based Whole Foods will be donating 5% of the sale price to Whole Kids Foundation, a nonprofit charitable group of Whole foods which campaigns on the importance of eating healthy foods and conducts healthy eating education in schools.

“We expected it to be very popular,” Whole Foods spokeswoman Kate Lowery said.

“We know our shoppers like deals, and they like value,” she said. “And they are playing in that space anyway, so why not meet them there and offer them something?”

Last  January, LivingSocial made also a remarkable deal when it launched a $10 off  in any 20$ amazon items gift cards which opted 1 million users in purchasing the gift cards.

PlaySay of DC Raises $570k of Funding from Disrupt NYC

Washington, D.C. – PlaySay, a language learning Facebook app which uses images in order for people to learn  new language has officially been launched at the Tech Crunch Disrupt in San Francisco and it bagged a $570K seed funding from Kevin Yu of Paypal Japan, Sean Glass and Novak Biddle Ventures.

PlaySay’s theory in its language learning platform is that people will learn aggressively in an environment where they are surrounded by people  they are comfortable with like the Facebook friends. The method of learning in PlaySay is that it allows Facebook users to restructure Facebook status updates word by word or image by image without English translation.

“Your Facebook friends are your new classmates. Checkins, status updates and pictures are your course materials.” Said co-founder Ryan Meinzer who also said that the company is planning to expand its language database aside from its current offering which is Spanish in the near future.

One of PlaySay’s method is by popping out a random Flickr photos (under the Creative Commons license) and tagged photos of your Facebook friends and then PlaySay will ask you a question in Español whether if it is your friend or if you can identify the person. With the question itself in Spanish, you will learn a word or two. It is also backed up by an audio platform for better delivery of learning. The platform also allows you to compete with a Facebook friend and Playsay user through status or display message translation.

The future is bright for PlaySay for it is getting positive buzz in the social network industry.

Visit PlaySay Facebook page and hit “like” for they well deserve it.

www.playsay.com

If you are currently log-in in Facebook, it will prompt you the Facebook page.

The Carlyle Group Files For A $100 M Initial Public Offering

Washington, D.C. – The Carlyle Group, a global alternative asset manager with more than $153 billion under management has filed a $100 million planned Initial Public Offering (IPO) according to a filing at Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) last Monday. The planned stock to be sold is at a maximum of $100 million worth of stocks representing a limited partnership but the company also stressed out that the number of stocks and amount planned to be raised may vary depending to the demands of the market.

The underwrites for the planned IPO includes J.P. Morgan, Citigroup and Credit Suisse. Carlyle Group has not released the amount for the common units to be sold in the $100 million IPO. Carlyle’s move for a public offering was not the only transition made by top American financial organizations, Carlyle followed the footsteps   the Blackstone Group and Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts to go public.

The Carlyle Group has more than $150 billion in assets and its investments under its umbrella of network which includes 270 companies and properties all over the world and it includes government-related investments like the top 100 the companies Booz Allen Hamilton, Arinc and Qinetiq.

Visit Carlyle’s Official Website for New Updates on the Planned IPO:

http://www.carlyle.com/

Groupon Reevaluates its Planned IPO Due to Volatile Market

Chicago, Illinois – Groupon, a leading provider of daily deals in the U.S. has postponed its planned Initial Public Offering or IPO for a couple of weeks due to stock turmoil in the U.S. market. According to the Wall Street Journal, Groupon’s plan of $750 million IPO to be launched on the upcoming labor day has been put on halt and has canceled its roadshow which was intended to attract new investors.

Aside from the volatile market which affected Groupon IPO, the daily deal leader is also facing another turmoil which includes the CEO Chief Executive Andrew Mason sending memo’s to the company’s employees which contains private financial information and details on the status and strength of the company which is prohibited by Securities and Exchange Commissions (SEC) rules.

Groupon was founded two and a half years ago and became an instant hit with consumers looking for promos and discounts in the web and also a big hit to local merchants for their products and services are being advertised. Groupon’s dominance had been dwindling the past months due to fast growth of competitors like the LivingSocial.com.

Groupon is available in more than 500 cities in the world and it received a series D funding of $950 million in the first month of January by huge list of investors like Andreessen Horowitz and in 2008 during its early stage received a series A funding of more than $4 million from Chevy Chase-based New Enterprise Associates (NEA) Venture Capital firm.

Groupon’s Official Website:

http://www.groupon.com

Facebook Adds Erskine Bowles to Its Board of Directors

Washington, D.C. – Social Network leader Facebook Inc. has “liked” Former White House Chief of Staff & President Emeritus of UNC Erskine Bowles and added her to its Board of Directors. Facebook has been boasting up its board of directors to prepare for its upcoming and expected $100-billion IPO next year or in the near future. Before Bowles, Facebook added another major player in its most coveted board in the form of Reed Hastings, Netflix’s chief executive.

A native of North Carolina, Erskine Bowles was the White House Chief of Staff under President Clinton’s administration, President of the 17-campus University of North Carolina system and also holds board positions with the financial services firm Morgan Stanley, southern retail chain Belk Inc., real-estate developer Cousins Properties Inc. and the railway company Norfolk Southern Corp.

“Erskine has held important roles in government, academia and business which have given him insight into how to build organizations and navigate complex issues,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive and co-founder, in a statement. “Along with his experience founding companies, this will be very valuable as we continue building new things to help make the world more open and connected.”

“Facebook has clearly emerged as a transformative force in the world,” Bowles said. “It’s no wonder given the talent Mark has put in place and the company’s focus and dedication to its mission. I’m really looking forward to getting to work and helping Facebook however I can.”

Even though Facebook did not state in their press release, some IT experts believes the addition of Bowles in the board is a part of its counter action to Google’s lobbying activities in the Congress.

Bowles will be joined by Mark Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, Donald E. Graham, chairman and CEO of The Washington Post Company, Reed Hastings, chairman and CEO of Netflix, and Peter Thiel of Clarium Capital and Founders Fund in the impressive list of Facebook Board of Directors.

Chipmaker Intel Forms Federal Unit; Scouting Office Space Around DC

Washington, D.C. – The world’s largest computer chip manufacturer Intel Corporation has announced last Tuesday (Aug. 30, 2011) of the creation of a new subsidiary unit called Intel federal which works with federal unit of the U.S. government which will be housed in Washington, DC and with offices in Oregon and California.

Intel’s main focus of the unit is on  the high performance computing segment, including work on exascale computing with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and eventually collaborating with all the branches of the government. The Exascale computers can perform one million trillion calculations per second and will be the fastest and most powerful supercomputer ever built. It will be more than 100 times faster than the current available supercomputer in the market.

“Reaching supercomputer performance levels of a hundred times more powerful than today by 2018 will require the combined efforts of both industry and government,” Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Datacenter and Connected Systems Group, said in a statement.

“The creation of Intel Federal demonstrates the strategic importance of these programs and will give us the ability to establish and maintain the unique processes, procedures and controls needed to develop and manage programs with the government, ” he noted.

Dave Patterson has been appointed as president of Intel Federal LLC. Patterson was previously the President and CEO of Optelecom-NKF Inc. and Intel believes that his experience will bring wide expertise on supercomputer production as well as federal computing on the unit .

Washington, D.C. is a perfect place for the Intel Federal Unit for it belongs in the Beltway area where I.T. industry is growing rapidly and home of successful start up companies.

Read Intel’s Official Press Release for more info:

http://newsroom.intel.com/community/blog

Vienna-Based Eloqua Files to Raise Up to $100 Million in IPO

Vienna, Virginia – Eloqua, a revenue performance management  (RPM) tools which help clients increase and monitor their revenue growth has filed its IPO (Initial Public Offering) last Wednesday according to Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) with estimated offering of $100 million.

Eloqua has not yet released specific details on to the number of shares to be sold and the price of stocks. The company plans to list its stock on the NASDAQ Global Market using the symbol “ELOQ”. The chosen underwriters to lead the IPO are J.P. Morgan Securities and Deutsche Bank Securities  according to the filing at SEC. According to the Eloqua, the proceeds of the IPO will be used for general corporate expenses and repayment of past debts and also to finance future expansion plans.

Eloqua’s flagship products are its RPM tools which are Software As A Service (Saas) platforms that provides clients insights and dramatically improve the growth performance of their revenues by combining different marketing and communication strategies. Eloqua’s services are generally categorized as marketing automation tools which provides accountability to the persons involved on the marketing strategies implemented and its effect on the revenue.

The company was funded in 1999 and was able to raised a $35.8 Million total funding from Bay Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and JMI Equity.

The company has an impressive roster of clients which includes  Adobe Systems, Dow Jones, Miami Heat, Dell, American Express, Fidelity, Polycom, Nestle and many others.

Visit Eloqua’s website for more information:

http://www.eloqua.com/

Chevy Chase-Based NEA Increases Investment in MapR Technologies

Chevy Chase, Maryland – New Enterprise Associates (NEA), a prime venture capital firm based in Chevy Chase and with offices in New York, India and China and has backed up more than 650 companies has increased its investments in MapR Technologies,  provider of business solutions in the field of data analytics and the advanced Hadoop Apache data analytic platform.

New Enterprise Associate’s additional funding was due to the launching of MapR’s latest technology, the Hadoop Apache data analytic platform which was said to be the most advanced in the industry to date. The additional funding of NEA will be used by MapR to continue the scale of their operations and development of data analytic solutions.

The series B funding was also backed up by Lightspeed Venture Partners and was led by Red Point Ventures. New Enterprise Associates also participated in the first round of funding of MapR Technologies.

“We raised this round to further increase our technology lead, expand our commercial efforts and increase customer adoption,” said CEO John Schroeder.

NEA or New Enterprise Associates has been in the venture capital firm industry for 30 years now and has grown up to $11 Billion of capital through its more than 650 funded companies.

Visit NEA Official’s Website for more details:

http://www.nea.com/

Herndon-Based AnyPresence Lands New $2 Million Investment

Herndon, Virginia – AnyPresence, a developer of the “employee engagement” software-as-a-service (Saas) has received a $2 M venture capital funding from an undisclosed investor according to a filing from SEC (Security and Exchange Commision). The funding is the first reported funding AnyPresence has raised and it was said that the funding will be used for the smartphone platform versions of their products.

The named mentioned in the regulatory funding from SEC includes Anirban Chakrabarti, co-founder and CEO; Betsy Atkins, former CEO, Richard Mendes, Co-Founder; Rakesh Rao, Co-founder, Bernard Tarr and Campbell Lanier of Kinetic Ventures as members of the board.

The AnyPresence Software Suite provides end-to-end employee engagement  and management solutions for mobile devices  and tablet devices.

Visit AnyPresence Official Website:

http://www.anypresence.com