Funding Daily: Thursday Night Fever

Investment news had a certain disco sparkle today. With all the gold, stars, light, motion, and daPulsing you’d think you were in a nightclub. Oontz. Oontz.

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FiveStars raises $13.9M for modernizing old-school loyalty cards

FiveStars raised a generous $13.9 million in a first round of funding for its rewards program that replaces old-school loyalty punch cards with a [slightly] more hi-tech and convenient alternative. The system operates similarly to grocery store member cards that are swiped at the checkout counter. Customers can earn discounts right there or points that will pay off in the future.

FiveStars participated in Y Combinator in 2011 and has since raised a total of $16 million in investment. This round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and DCM. Read more on VentureBeat.

LevelUp climbs towards the stars with $9M boost

Mobile payment service LevelUp has collected $9 million more in financial padding from T-Ventures, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom. The funding is the second tranche of a two-part round that brings LevelUp’s total raise to $21 million.

In June, LevelUp announced that it had secured $12 million from Highland Capital, Google Ventures, Balderton Capital, Continental Investors, and Transmedia Capital in part one of the large raise.

Considered to be a top mobile payment network second only to Starbucks, LevelUp provides a QR code pay-by-phone application for consumers and a terminal system for merchants. Read more on VentureBeat. 

Cortica gets $7M to endow computers with the power of sight

Israeli startup Cortica raised $7 million in a second round of funding. The investment was led by Horizons Ventures, not to be confused with Silicon Valley’s Horizon Ventures. Cortica’s image recognition technology fuses neuroscience and computer science by giving computers the ability to comprehend visual content on the web in real time. Read more on VentureBeat.

Gild leads companies to the unicorns of the tech world: talented developers

Talented developers are like white tigers — rare, expensive, and in high demand. Gild, an HR tool that helps companies evaluate developers, has snagged a significant $2 million in seed financing to simplify this recruitment process. Gild offers technology that identifies, measures, and profiles developer talent. This hiring solution provides an objective barometer of skill based on analysis of open-source code, community interaction, peer feedback, and code sampling. The round was led by Globespan Capital Partners and investor Mark Kvamme. Read more on VentureBeat.

daPulse gets fingers on $1.5M to eliminate workplace yammering

Yammer cousin daPulse drew in $1.5 million in its first official round of funding. Rather than dwelling on personal profiles as the point of relevancy, daPulse takes a topic-centric approach. Workers communicate about projects, news, developments, teams, and customer updates by following threads that directly pertain to them. The company was developed for two years within Wix.com and launched as an independent entity in February of 2012.

Be careful where you step: Movea takes 6.5M euros for motion sensing technology

Movea, a provider of motion processing and data fusion technologies, received a fifth anniversary present in the form of new funding. The company raised a Series C of 6.5 million euros led by Intel Capital, together with existing Investors iSource and GIMV.

Its technology is most commonly applied to consumer electronics and the sports, fitness, and eHealth industries. Movea has headquarters in Grenoble, France and a U.S. subsidiary in Silicon Valley, California. It previously raised $10.7 million in 2007.