Announcing outbrain's second round of financing
Today we’re announcing the completion of a $12M B-round investment in outbrain led by Carmel Ventures. Shlomo Dovrat is joining our board.
We are thrilled to have Carmel Ventures, Rhodium and Zohar Gilon join the company. They, along with Lightspeed, Gemini and GlenRock, have shown true thought leadership in making this investment at times like this.
Outbrain Secures $12M Second Round led by Carmel Ventures
NEW YORK, NY – February 11, 2009 – Outbrain Inc. today announced the completion of a $12M Series-B investment led by Carmel Ventures (www.carmelventures.com). Outbrain's previous backers - Gemini Israel Funds (www.gemini.co.il), Lightspeed Venture Partners (www.lightspeedvp.com) and GlenRock Israel (www.grg.co.il) - all participated in the round. Zohar Gilon and Rhodium have also joined the round. Following the investment, Shlomo Dovrat, co-founder and general partner of Carmel Ventures will be joining Outbrain's board of directors.
Outbrain is a platform for delivering personalized recommendations of blog and publisher content to readers. Bloggers and publishers can use Outbrain's free widget or API to provide their readers with rating functionality and personalized reading recommendations. The widget can be installed with one click on most leading blog platforms -- Blogger.com, TypePad, WordPress.org, Drupal, FeedFlare, MoveableType, etc. -- and also easily integrates with all major content-management-systems (CMS). Thousands of blogs and publishers have installed the Outbrain widget, including Chicago Tribune, VentureBeat, Discovery Channel and Sports Illustrated's Golf.com. Outbrain serves millions of content recommendations daily.
Outbrain was founded by Yaron Galai, Co-Founder of Quigo which was acquired by AOL last year, and Ori Lahav who previously headed R&D teams at Shopping.com. Outbrain is headquartered in New York City, with its R&D based in Israel.
From the Outbrain blog (http://blog.outbrain.com) – "Since our early days, Outbrain has been focused on providing readers of blogs and articles with great personalized reading recommendations. Every day there are wonderful nuggets of reading content being published, but the growing amount of noise makes it nearly impossible to find them. Our mission is to help readers uncover those nuggets easily in the places where they are already used to consuming content. Our recommendation algorithms constantly improve as more blogs install our widgets and more readers interact with them. This investment will enable us to significantly increase our market share, and thus continue to improve our recommended links on blogs and publishers using our service.
We are thrilled to have Carmel Ventures, Rhodium and Zohar Gilon join the company. They, along with Lightspeed, Gemini and GlenRock, have shown true thought leadership in making this investment at times like this.”
“The amount of content published online is exploding. Finding great content is getting both more difficult and more important. Outbrain provides web publishers with a turn-key, intelligent recommendation service that drives back significant traffic. Outbrain’s personalized recommended links offer great value to readers by combining their collective wisdom and using unique algorithms. We're excited to partner with Outbrain’s experienced founding team and help them build a great company", said Mr. Shlomo Dovrat of Carmel Ventures
To get the Outbrain widget on your site, go to www.outbrain.com/get/
Screenshots, logos and other materials you can use are available here - http://www.outbrain.com/new/pages/writeaboutus.html
Follow Outbrain on Twitter: www.twitter.com/outbrain
About Carmel Ventures
With over $600 million currently under management, several successful exits, and a growing portfolio of promising start-ups, Carmel is among Israel’s top-tier venture capital funds. Carmel’s investments are focused primarily on early stage companies in the fields of Software, Communications, Internet, Media, Semiconductors, and Consumer Electronics. Founded in 2000 by pioneers and leaders of the Israeli high tech industry, Carmel provides significant capital and active, hands-on support through the growth cycle of its portfolio companies and is recognized as a true company building fund in Israel. Carmel, headquartered in Herzliya, Israel enjoys a worldwide network of industry, strategic and investment resources.
Carmel is an affiliate of the Viola Partners Group, a leading innovative private equity investment group with over $1.8B under management focused on technology-based investment opportunities in Israel. For more information, please visit
www.carmelventures.com
About Gemini
A pioneer in Israel's venture capital industry, Gemini Israel Funds has grown to be the leading Israeli seed and early stage fund in the Information Technology arena. The firm, founded in 1993, manages more than $700 million in five funds. Investments are focused on the areas of Communications and Wireless Technologies, Enterprise Software, Internet, Consumer Electronics and Semiconductors, and more recently in Greentech. Through offices in Israel and Silicon Valley, Gemini offers portfolio companies access to top-tier U.S. based investors and a global network of corporate partners. As investment professionals, Gemini's key contributions include an ability to make daring investment decisions and the capability to utilize past operational experience in assisting portfolio companies. Past successes include: Allot, Mellanox, Saifun, Precise, Traiana, Butterfly, Commtouch, Ornet, Verisity, Jacada, Ceragon, Riverhead, nLayers, Itemfield and others.
www.gemini.co.il
About Lightspeed Venture Partners
Lightspeed Venture Partners is a leading global venture capital firm with over $2 billion of committed capital under management. Lightspeed’s investment professionals and advisors are located in Silicon Valley, China, India and Israel. Over the past two decades, the Lightspeed team has backed more than 150 companies, many of which have become leaders in their respective markets, including Blue Nile, Brocade, Calista, Ciena, DoubleClick, eHealth Insurance, Galileo Technology, Growth Networks, Informatica, Kiva Software, LightLogic, Maker Communications, Metasolv, Phone.com, Quantum Effect Devices, Riverbed, Sirocco, Virsa Systems and Waveset.
About GlenRock
Founded by Leon Recanati in 2003, the GlenRock Group leverages a unique combination of private equity, multidisciplinary in-house expertise, unmatched access to quality dealflow, and a focused but flexible investment strategy to achieve maximum returns. With a global presence and ready access to the most prominent names in Israeli business, academia, and science, GlenRock is experienced at identifying advanced technology and Life Sciences opportunities - and leading them to realization of their true market potential. GlenRock takes an active and long-term role in the development and growth of portfolio companies – ensuring that extraordinary ideas evolve into business success stories.
www.grg.co.il
About Rhodium
Rhodium is a private investment firm, based in Israel with an office in the U.S. and a broad network of international affiliates. Rhodium focuses on high growth, cutting-edge opportunities in the fields of internet, new-media, mobile, and new technologies in general. Rhodium supports entrepreneurs and strengthens their ventures with its resources; funding, broad management expertise and an extensive valuable network of business contacts around the globe. Rhodium looks to take an active role in most of its portfolio companies. Rhodium strategically invests in a handful of promising companies each year in order to be actively involved in creating the optimal environment for these companies to successfully transform into world-class business ventures.
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