FUNDING FUNDING FUNDING

A sample of some of this weeks funding news.

BIGFISH
ROBOT GALAXY
MPOWER
MINIWEB

Big Fish is planning a rapid global expansion off the back of a massive $83.3m investment from leading venture capitalist firms.

Balderton Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Salmon River Capital are the three firms stepping up to pump big money into the firm, famous for its 'a game a day' release strategy that sees a new casual PC title released via the web every day of the week.

The investment is said to be the US state of Washington's biggest VC payout this year.

interactive retail experience" RobotGalaxy has announced the raising of $5 million in private investment which is to fuel the company’s expansion, including the launch of a new virtual world.
RobotGalaxy's site currently allows young “explorers” to assemble, program and activate their own robots from thousands of combinations, with two retail stores opened – one in the Freehold Raceway Mall, NJ and one in the Palisades Center, NY.

Mpowerplayer today announced that it has received $2.5 million in Series A funding. This round was led by New Atlantic Ventures, the Center for Innovative Technology GAP Fund, and LaunchBox Digital




"70 percent of online consumers play games in their web browser, but less than 5 percent play games on their mobile phone," said Michael Powers, CEO of Mpowerplayer. "Every one of these people carries a game console in their pocket, but they need to discover what they can do with it." 



The mobile company's resource infusion will help support its widget-based mobile game catalog on the social networks and gaming community web sites. The company's current customers include EA Mobile and Sega Mobile.

"Casual web gamers are a hugely under-served market for mobile content and we are uniquely positioned to bridge that gap," added Powers. 



Miniweb, a British interactive TV platform spun out of BSkyB (NYSE: BSY), has announced a massive $32 million (£18.35 million) venture round from US investors to take its product offerings international. Funding comes from Meritage Funds in Denver, Colorado and DeGeorge Holdings III, Nevada. The announcement was made at the IBC event; it's not clear what kind of stake Miniweb had to give away for this.

Middlesex-based Miniweb targets iTV advertisers who want to go beyond the walled garden offered by digital satellite's red button, instead offering them TV Sites, more internet-like websites built using WTVHTML, on broadband-capable set-top boxes. It's a variant of HTML and so, the theory goes, wraps the cost of developing an iTV presence in to existing web production budgets.

The outfit was formed in 2006, when former BSkyB technical alliances director Ian Valentine left the broadcaster's interactive unit and bought its SkyNet and SkyKeys services. Rebadged TV Key and Key-And-See, these other two Miniweb services let advertisers buy branded alphanumeric short codes that, when keyed in to a remote control, link the set-top box to a TV Site (ie. the TV Key for "ROBERT" is 762378 and would cost £15,000 a year to rent, if anyone's feeling generous). The service is also offered to programme makers to offer interactive web services without forcing viewers to go fetch their laptops.