Phunware, an Austin, TX-developer of multiscreen cloud platform that enables brands to engage, manage and monetize their users worldwide, raised $26.25m in the first close of its Series E funding.
The balance of the $30m round is expected to close in the next 60 days.
The investment, which brought the total raised to date to $43m, was led by Firsthand Technology Value Fund (NASDAQ: SVVC), with participation from current investors Fraser McCombs Ventures, Maxima Ventures, Wild Basin Investment and the Central Texas Angel Network (CTAN), as well as new strategic investors Cisco and WWE (NYSE: WWE). In conjunction with the funding, Kevin Landis, Chairman and President of Firsthand, and Chase Fraser, Managing Partner of Fraser McCombs Capital, joined Phunware’s board of directors.
Founded in 2009 by Alan S. Knitowski, Chairman and CEO, Phunware provides a cloud-based integrated services platform that allows brands to add multiscreen application support for content management, location based services, advertising, alerts and notifications and business intelligence and analytics.
The company is responsible for multiscreen infrastructure, software and application development services for customers including E! Entertainment Television, NBC Sports, WWE, NASCAR, CBS, Qualcomm, Edmunds, Jawbone, HomeAway, Turner, UHealth, Transamerica, King, Warner Brothers, AT&T and Adobe amongst others.
It closed 2013 with revenues of $22.1M.
FinSMEs
18/03/2014