Vestigo Ventures closes $58.9M funding round
Vestigo Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in innovative fintech companies, announced that it successfully closed a funding round to the tune of $58.9 million. The Cambridge-based firm was founded by David Blundin, founder of Cogo Labs; Mark Casady, former CEO and chairman of LPL Financial; and Managing Director Ian Sheridan. To date, Vestigo Ventures has invested in eight companies, including Digital Assets Data, LifeYield, Micronotes, Mirador, Netcapital, TowerIQ and Vestmark. [PR Newswire]
VMWare buys CloudHealth Technologies for $500M
Boston’s CloudHealth Technologies has a buyer: California-based VMWare. The Palo Alto company will pay a reported $500 million for CloudHealth’s cloud management platform, which lets companies automate their cloud environments, and control and analyze the cost, security and performance of their computing environments in native public clouds like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud. The acquisition will allow VMware to “radically simplify” operations across multiple native public clouds, according to the company. [Built In Boston]
Boston-made AI will make human-like robots more so
Affectiva, the Boston-based creator of emotion AI, has partnered with SoftBank Robotics to deploy their technology in SoftBank’s humanoid robot, Pepper. The partnership will enable Pepper to have “more relational and human-like interactions” with people. Pepper is already capable of recognizing human emotions and adapting behavior accordingly; this technological upgrade will help Pepper in her role as companion robot, working in retail, hotels, banks and more as a concierge of sorts. [Business Wire]
SmartBear to acquire Zephyr, growing test management capabilities
SmartBear, a Somerville-based tech company that equips millions of engineers with tools for every step of the software development cycle, announced that it will be acquiring Zephyr to grow its test management offerings. Test management is a critical component of developing, testing and deploying high-quality software quickly, and SmartBear believes purchasing the California-based company will make them the the market leader in test management solutions. Salesforce, National Geographic and Mastercard are just a few of the global businesses currently using SmartBear’s software tools. [SmartBear]
