TechTaffy

tech:

taffy

Echo Nest Closes $17.3M Financing Round

By TechTaffy Desk

[Techtaffy Newsdesk]

The Echo Nest, a music intelligence platform, has closed a $17.3 million financing round led by Norwest Venture Partners. Prior investors Matrix Partners, Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Fringe Partners, Jim Pallotta and board member Michael Brown also participated in this round. Jeff Crowe from Norwest will be joining the company’s board of directors.

This latest round of funding will help The Echo Nest further strengthen its market-leading position with a focus on international sales and marketing. The financing will also support continued development of ‘Fanalytics,’ data-driven solutions to better understand music fans.

The Echo Nest powers smarter music applications for media companies and independent developers, with a customer base that reaches over 150 million music fans every month. Over 340 applications have been built on The Echo Nest platform, says the company. A four-time National Science Foundation grantee, the Echo Nest was co-founded by two MIT PhDs. Investors include Norwest Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, Commonwealth Capital Ventures, and three co-founders of MIT Media Lab.

[Image courtesy: Echo Nest]

Just in

Series A

Tembo raises $14M

Cincinnati, Ohio-based Tembo, a Postgres managed service provider, has raised $14 million in a Series A funding round.
Around the web

Raspberry Pi is now a public company — TC

Raspberry Pi priced its IPO on the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday morning at £2.80 per share, valuing it at £542 million, or $690 million at today’s exchange rate, writes Romain Dillet. 
Fundings

AlphaSense raises $650M

AlphaSense, a market intelligence and search platform, has raised $650 million in funding, co-led by Viking Global Investors and BDT & MSD Partners.
Around the web

Elon Musk’s xAI raises $6B to take on OpenAI — VentureBeat

Confirming reports from April, the series B investment comes from the participation of multiple known venture capital firms and investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (A16z), Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding, writes Shubham Sharma. 
IT

Capgemini partners with DARPA to explore quantum computing for carbon capture

Capgemini Government Solutions has launched a new initiative with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to investigate quantum computing's potential in carbon capture.