Hightechwire: Venture Wrap

The latest venture funding activity includes:

* Heavy.com, an online video site for 18-34 year old males, which has closed a $20m financing from Polaris Venture Partners. The funding (which comes on top of $10m provided by Polaris in early 2006) will be used to expand Heavy’s network internationally. According to Mike Hirshland, a partner at Polaris, “Heavy is building a true 21st century media company, which combines internally developed content with great consumer generated content and with a sustainable revenue model. As advertisers expand their online video budgets in 2007, they are looking to work with the few online brands that can effectively deliver audience in scale.”

* With technology developed in Israel, San Francisco based Amobee has developed a telco grade adserving solution for mobile operators, which enables them to ad-fund non-voice related apps and services. The company has raised further funding from Sequoia and Accel (they raised $5m in 2005).

On the M&A side, Colorado-based Digitalglobe, which provides high resolution commercial satellite imagery and geospatial information products has acquired GlobeXplorer, a geographic data integration and publishing company from Stewart REI. GlobeXplorer’s web-based search and delivery apps will augment Digitalglobe’s Quickbird satellite system. The company’s images power GoogleEarth and they anticipate launching two new satellites in 07/08.