Funding Daily: March 6, 2014

Here are the day’s funding stories:

Founders Fund raises a big $1B

Major venture firm Founders Fund is announcing a hefty new fund. It’s packing $1 billion, according to a press release that came out today. That’s quite a large amount, considering that the most recent fund came out to $625 million and that, since starting in 2005, Founders Fund had raised $1.15 billion across four funds. Read more on VentureBeat.

SolarBridge takes $42M

“SolarBridge Technologies (SolarBridge), the leading provider of microinverters and monitoring technology for TrueACTM solar systems, announced today it has closed a $42 million round of funding led by Constellation Technology Ventures, part of Exelon Corp. (NYSE: EXC), the nation’s leading competitive energy provider. The funding will be used to expand sales and marketing and continue the company’s focus on research and development as it rapidly scales its customer base across North America and Australia.” Read the press release.

Investors pour $37.2M into DigitalOcean

DigitalOcean is a hot public cloud. Developers constantly talk about it on message boards, and it’s growing fast as a provider of infrastructure for running websites. Investors aren’t about to let that excitement and growth fizzle out. They’re putting up $37.2 million to make DigitalOcean bigger. Get the full scoop on VentureBeat.

Trusper launches with $6.17M

Trusper, an app that collects lifestyle tips from users, has gained five million users in eight months. The initial numbers look promising: Users view over 10 million tips per day, outpacing similar lifestyle apps. And this all happened in beta, through word-of-mouth marketing. Read the rest on VentureBeat.

Emotient announces $6M

As brick-and-mortar retailers fight to stay alive during the rise of online shopping, tactics such as facial-expression recognition are gaining popularity. San Diego-based Emotient just raked in $6 million to continue the emotion analysis spree. Get the details on VentureBeat.

Quipper secures $5.8M

Via email: “Quipper, London-based mobile learning company backed by Atomico, has just completed a series A2 fund raising ($5.8M) from Atomico, Benesse (Japanese Pearson equivalent education giant) among some others. Our main service, Quipper School, is similar to KhanAcademy: i) we create curriculum aligned courses (lectures+quizzes), ii) teachers can set assignments and monitor the progress, iii) students can learn on any devices. We’re focusing now on Asian countries (e.g. Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand), and will use the newly raised fund to aggressively expand to other regions (especially other Asian countries and Latin American countries).”

CityAds raises $5M

Klever Internet Investments, the technology branch of a major Russian private investor, Klever Asset Management, has received a minority stake in CityAds Media, a Moscow-based international affiliate marketing and performance advertising platform, in exchange for $5 million in growth equity funding. Read more on VentureBeat.