ARCH Venture Partners announced the closing of its seventh venture fund with $400 million in capital commitments. ARCH Venture Fund VII, L.P. (Fund VII) makes ARCH one of the largest…

Mobius Microsystems, Inc. announced today that it closed its Series B round of financing in the amount of $10.22 million. The investors for this round were Foundation Capital, Menlo…

REVShare, a Temecula, Calif.’ company that lets advertisers to bid for television time on a cost-per-action basis, has raised $20 million in a first round of funding.
The private equity firm Carlyle Group and H.I.G. Ventures co-led the round.

The auction/exchange model contrasts with the traditional method of charging based on projected audience size.

Founded in 1989, REVShare’s exchange allows advertisers to specify a price they are willing to pay per response (i.e. when someone is prompted to call a toll-free number or visit a website) and the air time is allocated according to return on investment. Under this system, stations are able to sell their inventory without revealing the effective rate of their ads, and advertisers are able to pay rates that are determined by a combination of market forces and response to their ads.

Here are the full details.

NeoScale Systems, a Silicon valley provider of data storage security products that ate through $44 million in venture backing, has shuttered.

NCipher, a “management specialist” company, has acquired the Milpitas, Calif.’ company’s assets for $1.95 million. The assets include NeoScale’s CryptoStor tape encryption product and KeyVault key management technology, but did not include the company’s disk encryption technology.

VentureBeat first heard about the closure of NeoScale from a source three weeks ago, and had been trying to confirm details with investors. The company’s representatives weren’t returning phone calls. Lead investors, including Atul Kapadia of Bay Partners, Wes Raffel from ATV, declined to comment. Lightspeed Venture Partners and Seven Rosen, the company’s two other investors, did not respond to a request for comment. The company faced plenty of competition, including from Decru, now owned by Network Appliance.

The sale to nCipher was made by Hercules Technology Growth Capital, which owned the assets after having offering a loan the company with preferential terms.

Holy crap. It’s 1:37 into the video, pure pain.

We’ve had some extraordinary ocean swell this last week, 1 experienced surfer and 2 professional crab fisherman have lost their lives. Most of this footage was shot over in Half Moon Bay; Ghost Tree is down by Pebble Beach.

PS- keep in mind that the the little yellow dot of a surfboard in this photo is actually over 8 feet long.

Israel-based startup Optimal Test has raised $16 million in a second round of financing led by Evergreen Venture Partners as well as former investors – Carmel Ventures and Pitango. The round brings to $30 million the total VC funds raised by the company.

Optimal Test develops a test suite for maximizing IC yields through managed test results. In other words, Optimal Test produces efficiency reports on the yield of hardware chips and manages the entire testing chain, thus solving a major pain shared by all semiconductor companies. It manages to do so by combining automatic test equipment data with business enterprise data.

Dan Glotter, CEO and co-founder of OptimalTest, said:

“The money we have raised will help us establish support sites for new customers around the world, expand our workforce and continue to invest in the research and development of existing and new products. We are expanding at a fast pace and we intend to recruit more than 40 engineers and software professionals during 2008.”

It’s not the first time OptimalTest produces good news – last year the company sold its Test Management Solution (TMS) software to an undisclosed European semiconductor manufacturer in a money heavy licensing deal. OptimalTest was founded in 2005 and now employs 60 workers.

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ConXtech is a Hayward, Calif. startup that makes a steel-frame building system that it claims makes building construction faster, and the end product safer and stronger.

The $7.1 million round is part of an $8 million total second round, led by Columbus Nova Partners (via peHUB). The company’s system is pretty interesting, so here’s more on how part of it works from their webpage:

During the field assembly process, ConXBeams are lowered and locked into place between ConXColumns from the top down. The ends of beam connectors immediately and easily lock into place resulting in an instant stable connection…

After the structure is assembled, high-strength bolts and custom washers filled with fluorescent orange silicon gel that squirts when the pre-load reaches the desired tension are inserted diagonally into the four corners of the adjoining outer-collar plates on all SMRSF connections. A hydraulic torque wrench is then used to tighten the bolts…

Because of ConXFrame’s unique ability to endure severe lateral loads, the system typically requires no shear walls, cross bracing or other conventional structural support up to 7 floors, even in the highest seismic zones. The system can be placed virtually anywhere on a concrete podium with parking or mixed use below. In most cases, there is no requirement to align the load path of the ConX structure above the podium with the shear walls or columns below the podium structure, thereby providing architectural freedom not achievable with any other structural system.

Check out the new Gemini page on Facebook. It’s quite simplistic, but it’s a good place for Gemini to collect some fans, and hopefully for some discussions on Israeli venture capital, seed investing, and others.

Fred Wilson mentioned that some people already “stole” the Sequoia page and Kleiner page. (Unfortunately), Gemini is not as popular, and the page was free when we set it up. One day…

On this day in 1792 King Louis XVI was tried for treason in France, of which he was found guilty and guillotined in Jan of 1793. While perhaps better known as the husband of Marie Antoinette, King Louis has a rather important role in American history.

Throughout most of the Revolutionary War the Continental Congress assigned Benjamin Franklin as their ambassador in Paris. It was Franklin’s job to court the King Louis XVI to secure funding, weapons and supplies, and ultimately the assistance of the French military forces. Franklin accomplished all of this over his years in Paris, and while France declared war on Great Britain in 1778 it wasn’t until Yorktown that France became involved with ground troops and France’s formidable navy sailed into Chesapeake Bay which sealed Britain’s fate.

Ironically, France’s involvement had nothing to do with a newfound appreciation for the equality of man, and while it had much to do with their historical hatred of Britain, the fact remains that France became involved in the American war for independence out of a more pragmatic desire, economics. France’s economy was in the tank and it was hoped that assisting the American colonies achieve independence would secure favorable trade relations. However, rather than raising taxes the French took on international debt to finance the Americans and in the end this fiscal strategy failed miserably.

With France in a deep recession and the monarchy despised for it’s frivolous lifestyle, among other factors, the underclass revolted and the events that unfolded in the late 1780’s spelled the end of Louis XVI and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte.

In an ironic twist of fate, it was the consequences of financing the American Revolution that created the conditions upon which the French Revolution were possible. Napoleon of course then proceeded to crown himself Emperor of France and King of Italy (Master of the Universe was unavailable) and in 1805 the Royal Navy decimated the French Navy at Trafalgar and in 1815 the British Army decisively defeated the French at Waterloo, which saw the expulsion of Napoleon and installment of King Louis XVIII, the brother of Louis XVI.

First of all, I wasn’t there. Again – I did not make it to the Led Zeppelin reunion. However, as I blog about many of the live shows I go to, I could not ignore this event. Claimed to be the biggest reunion in the past 20 years, it is said that the concert yesterday was excellent.

All I want to ask – Please turn this into a real tour. If it makes a difference, you have at least one more guaranteed ticket, at (almost) any price.

Oh, and one more thing. If you do decide to tour, I will be waiting in San Francisco. Still, would be nice if you stop in Tel-Aviv as well.

Update: Seems Led Zeppelin won’t be going on a tour, as stated here and 3000 other places. This is a disappointment for me, although my good friend Aner thinks otherwise. In his post, Aner talked about the Led Zeppelin desire for more Cash. That may be true, but I just don’t care. All I want is an opportunity to see Page & Plant live, performing Whole Lotta Love. I truly don’t mind who makes money on the way, and what other deals are made in the background. Personally, I am sure it will elevate my soul…