Monday, December 14, 2015

Bay Area Tech Wire -- Dec. 14

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BAY AREA TECH WIRE -- Dec. 14, 2015
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To subscribe: www.bayareatechwire.com

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Brisbane-Based Pramata Raises $10 Million in First Round of Funding
o San Jose-Based Fairchild Rebuffs Unsolicited Takeover Bid
o Salesforce.com Acquires Palo Alto-Based Startup MinHash
o XPrize Launches New Competition Focused on Ocean Exploration
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Briefly Noted:
Palo Alto Networks, Business Wire
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o Brisbane-Based Pramata Raises $10 Million in First Round of Funding

Brisbane, Calif. -- Pramata, the Brisbane-based developer of a platform designed to help B2B companies retain and grow customer relationships, said on Monday it has raised $10 million in its first round of funding, led by Boston-based Volition Capital. Previous backers Argosy Capital and Peninsula Ventures also contributed. The company said it will use the proceeds to accelerate its product development, sales and marketing activities. Pramata's Customer Relationship Intelligence technology extracts key information about customers from contracts and billing systems. B2B companies, such as CenturyLink, Cisco, Comcast, Medtronic, Truven, FICO and Novelis, then use the information to answer questions about complex customer relationships. "Teams spend too much time trying to extract and understand the historical information buried in [contracts], trying to piece together the puzzle of the current relationship," said Pramata co-founder and CEO Praful Saklani. "With Pramata, they can immediately leverage customer intelligence to focus on action to drive retention and growth results." Larry Cheng, managing partner of Volition Capital, has joined the company's board of directors.
http://www.pramata.com 
http://www.pramata.com/who-we-are/news-and-events/press-releases/pramata-announces-10-million-series-a-funding/ 
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o San Jose-Based Fairchild Rebuffs Unsolicited Takeover Bid

San Jose, Calif. -- One week after receiving an unsolicited takeover bid from an unnamed suitor, San Jose-based Fairchild Semiconductor, a supplier of power semiconductor products, said on Monday that the offer isn't superior to its existing merger agreement with ON Semiconductor. The company received the $21.70 a share cash offer last Monday. Its current deal with ON, announced last month, is for $20 a share in cash. Still, Fairchild said it will stick with its original agreement. "Fairchild remains subject to the merger agreement and Fairchild's board of directors has not changed its recommendation in support of the merger agreement," the company said in a statement,
http://www.fairchildsemi.com
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151214005602/en/Fairchild-Semiconductor-Announces-Developments-Connection-Unsolicited-Proposal 
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o Salesforce.com Acquires Palo Alto-Based Startup MinHash

San Francisco -- Salesforce.com, the San Francisco-based customer relationship management software giant, has acquired Palo Alto-based big data startup MinHash, the company confirmed on Monday. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. "We're excited to share the news that the MinHash team is joining Salesforce," MinHash posted on its website. "At Salesforce, we will continue to pursue our passion for search, data science and machine learning on a much broader scale, as part of the world’s #1 CRM company. MinHash has developed a content discovery engine called AILA that scans thousands of media posts to track the usage of keywords and social trends in an effort to help marketers better target audiences. The company said it will discontinue its platform as of Jan. 21.
http://www.minhash.com/ 
https://www.salesforce.com
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o XPrize Launches New Competition Focused on Ocean Exploration

San Francisco -- Twenty years after launching its first worldwide contest focused on manned space flight, non-profit XPrize on Monday announced a new competition centered around ocean exploration. The $7 million Ocean Discovery XPrize, announced Monday in San Francisco, will challenge teams to develop technologies for rapid and unmanned ocean exploration. As part of the prize, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will offer a $1 million bonus to teams that demonstrate their technology can "sniff out" a specified object in the ocean through biological and chemical signals. "Our oceans cover two-thirds of our planet's surface and are a crucial global source of food, energy, economic security and even the air we breathe, yet 95% of the deep sea remains a mystery to us," said Peter Diamandis, the organization's chairman and CEO. "In fact, we have better maps of the surface of Mars than we do of our own seafloor." The three-year competition includes nine months for team registration, 12 months for initial development and 18 months to complete two rounds of testing and judging by an expert panel.
http://oceandiscovery.xprize.org/ 
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o Briefly Noted:

(Santa Clara, Calif.) Santa Clara-based Palo Alto Networks, developer of an enterprise cybersecurity platform, on Monday named Naveen Zutshi as its chief information officer (CIO), responsible with managing all of the company's IT activities. Naveen most recently served as the senior vice president of technology at Gap Inc., and previously was the vice president of technology and operations at Encover.
https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/company/press/2015/palo-alto-networks-names-naveen-zutshi-as-cio.html 

(San Francisco) San Francisco-based Business Wire, a provider of press release distribution and regulatory disclosure services, on Monday named Robert Markel as its chief information security officer. Markel most recently served as the director of information security at Virgin America.
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151214005586/en/Business-Wire-Names-Robert-Markel-Chief-Information

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