Funding Daily: Taxi cab confessions

The Silicon Valley taxi wars peaked yesterday when cab drivers protested San Francisco’s City Hall and hours later the California Public Utilities Commission came out with a new set of proposed regulations for ridesharing startups. Amidst all this drama, Flywheel — one of the only transportation startups supported by the cab industry — raised nearly $15 million to take on these “road bandits” and change the cab industry from within.

Apigee scores $35M in funding for all the APIs you can handle

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Apigee, an enterprise-grade API management platform company, has just announced a large round of funding: $35 million from a slew of marquee-grade investors. The funding was led by a new fund managed by BlackRock with participation from Accenture and existing investors Bay Partners, Focus Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, SAP Ventures, and Third Point Ventures. The endgame of all Apigee’s products is to help any kind of company link its applications and all the data generated to APIs for internal dev team use as well as use by external third-party developers. Read more on VentureBeat.

Dropcam lands $30M to be the Apple of the future connected home 

Surveillance camera company Dropcam has raised $30 million for its cloud-based software that owners use to monitor their homes from afar. Dropcam’s pitch is to be more than just a home surveillance camera company; it wants to be the ultimate home monitoring service. That ambition puts it at the heart of the fledgling Internet of Things. The round, led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP)  and joined by Kliener Perkins, Accel Partners, and Menlo Ventures, is more than all of Dropcam’s previous rounds combined. (Its previous round came in June 2012, when it raised $12 million. Read more on VentureBeat.

ZestFinance raises $20M from Thiel Capital

ZestFinance has raised $20 million led by Silicon Valley heavyweight Peter Thiel. ZestFinance builds technology that minimizes risks in making loans. The company uses Big Data analytics to asses the risk level of a potential borrower and perform credit analysis. Existing investors Northgate Capital and existing investor Lightspeed Venture Partners, Matrix Venture Partners, Kensington Capital Holdings, and Eastward Capital Partners contributed to his round. This brings the company’s total venture capital raised to $55 million.

Flywheel raises $14.8M to help taxi drivers keep up with Lyft, Uber, Sidecar  

Today Flywheel announced closing $14.8 million in its second round of funding to modernize the way cab companies operate. The app lets passengers hail and pay for cabs from their smartphones and rate drivers, giving traditional taxis the same benefits and conveniences as controversial ridesharing startups like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar. This investment, led by Craton Equity Partners with participation from existing investors Rockport Capital and Shasta Ventures will fuel Flywheel’s U.S. expansion and increase its partnerships with fleets nationwide. Read more on VentureBeat. 

4INFO raises $8M to solve ‘No. 1 problem’ with mobile ads (exclusive)

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4INFO has raised $8 million to solve one of the biggest challenges in mobile advertising — measurement. 4INFO partners with “big data” providers to collect information about consumers and then matches each mobile device to an individual household. Its flagship AdHaven Bullseye platform leverages existing information about that household, along with data from the mobile device, to create a more comprehensive profile of that customer and serve more targeted ads. Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital led this round of financing, along with existing investors Draper Fisher Jurveston, Gannet, Mezzanine Capital, and U.S. Venture Partners. The San Mateo company has raised $64.3 million to date. Read more on VentureBeat. 

Chirpify chirps up that it raised $6M

Chirpify has raised a total of $6 million in its first round of funding. The startup makes it easy to buy, sell, donate and pay in-stream on social media. The Portland company seeks to turn replies and comments into cash. Investors include Voyager Capital, Saturn Partners, Provenance Ventures, Idan Ravin, and others.  It works with brands including Adidas, MasterCard, the Portland Trailblazers, Taco Bell, Green Day, and Snoop Dogg.

Israeli startup Latto raises $4M 

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Tel Aviv-based Latto closed a $4-million funding round to bring its multiscreen video store platform to market, raising the total invested to $15 million. The service is oriented more to content owners and distributors than to end users, offering a single solution to market and sell video assets on tablets, smartphones, and desktops in a personalized and efficient way.The company did not disclose the investors.