Kosmix

Kosmix Corp. of Mountain View, Calif., has received a $10 million investment led by new investor DAG Ventures of Palo Alto, Calif. Also participating were current investors Accel Partners of Palo Alto and Lightspeed Venture Partners of Menlo Park, Calif. The company will use the cash to expand its health consumer site, righthealth.com, and the company's recently launched consumer auto site, rightautos.com. Kosmix operates a network of topical Web sites that feature a homepage with videos, images, news, sources information and patient forums, designed to provide consumers with a 360-degree view of any topic. The company expects to add more consumer sites to health and autos in the coming months.

Smilebox

Smilebox Inc. of Redmond, Wash., a maker of multimedia expressions technology, has raised $7 million in Series B financing. Bessemer Venture Partners of Menlo Park, Calif., led the round joined by the returning Frazier Technology Ventures of Seattle. Rob Stavis, managing partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, will join the Smilebox board. The company will use the new funding to expand internationally, extend its syndication and promotional partnerships and bring Smilebox to new platforms. Launched in June 2006, Smilebox allows family and friends to share photos, videos and words inside digital scrapbooks, slide shows and photo greetings by e-mail, blog or print.

Kenshoo

London-based Kenshoo, a provider of search-marketing automated technology, has received a first round investment for an undisclosed amount from Sequoia Capital of Menlo Park, Calif. The company's flagship product, Kenshoo Search, is an SEM platform, which automates the process of building cross-channel search campaigns.

Networking

Cleversafe

Dispersed storage software technology provider Cleversafe Inc. of Chicago has received an undisclosed Series C funding. Harrison Street Capital LLC of Chicago and Sumitomo Bank's investment arm, Presidio Ventures of Los Altos, Calif., led the round, joined by existing investors New Enterprise Associates of Baltimore, Alsop Louie Partners and OCA Ventures of Chicago. Christopher Galvin, Harrison's co-founder and chairman and the former CEO of Motorola Inc., will take a seat on the company's board of directors. Cleversafe plans to use the financing for commercialization of products based on its dispersed storage technology early next year. The company's dispersed storage technology is designed to be more secure and cost-effective than traditional copy-based storage methods. Cleversafe says it can tolerate multiple simultaneous failures of hardware, storage locations or administrators, while still keeping user's data secure and easily accessible.

Semiconductors

Inside Contactless

Inside Contactless of Aix-en-Provence, France, a maker of contactless payment chips and NFC technologies for mobile devices, has closed a €25 million ($38 million) round. The investment was led by Nokia Growth Partners of Menlo Park, Calif. joined by existing investors Sofinnova Partners of Paris, Vertex Ventures of Tel Aviv, Israel, Siparex Ventures of Paris, GIMV of Belgium, EuroUS Venture of San Francisco, Granite Global Ventures of Menlo Park and Visa Ventures. In Septmeber 2006, Inside Contactless closed a $25 million, which followed a 2005 round for $10.6 million. The capital allows the company to expand internationally and broaden its product portfolio. The company is a fabless semiconductor company developing contactless chip platforms. Inside's lead product MicroPass is a microprocessor-based contactless chip platform that allows consumers to make purchases by simply waving their contactless credit and debit cards past a secure reader.

SensorDynamics

Semifabless semiconductor company SensorDynamics AG of Graz-Lebring, Austria, has raised €25 million ($37 million) in Series B equity funding. Return investors included Global Equity Partners Beteiligungs-Management AG, Deutsche Effecten- und Wechsel-Beteiligungsgesellschaft AG, known as DEWB, HTA III Venture Beteiligungs-Invest AG and SiemensVenture Capital, joined by newcomers Pontis Venture Partners, Fidura Private Equity Funds and IPOAustria with its Steirische Technologie- und Wachstumsfonds. In 2004, SensorDynamics raised a $24 million first round. The startup was founded in March 2003 by former executives from Austriamicrosystems AG, which went public on the Swiss exchange in 2004. SensorDynamics, a maker of microelectromechanical sensor systems, provides micro and wireless sensor products as well as engineering services to the automobile industry.

Media

REVShare

Temecula, Calif.-based television advertising broker REVShare raised $20 million in growth funding from The Carlyle Group of San Francisco and HIG Ventures of Miami to expand a proprietary bidding system that allows advertisers to purchase time on a Cost-Per-Action basis similar to web advertising exchanges. The deal is the first outside investment in the 18-year-old company's history, and while some of the funds will go to cash out founders' equity, the majority will be used to expand technology capabilities and scale up business functions to accommodate growth that has tripled REVShare's media billings since 2003. - Clifford Carlsen

Wireless

E-Band

San Diego, Calif.-based high-capacity wireless equipment developer E-Band Communications Corp. raised $10 million from a syndicate of strategic and financial investors to fund continued development and volume production of systems to allow carriers and enterprise customers to transmit high-bandwidth traffic. The deal was led by India's Reliance Technology Ventures Limited and included previous investors ADC Telecommunications of Eden Prairie, Minn., Express Ventures of San Diego, Hercules Technology Growth Capital Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., Investec of South Africa and an unnamed wireless carrier. The deal comes on top of $3.2 million in Series A investment the company raised in 2006, and is expected to take it to profitability in 2009. - C.C.