Approximately $100 Million Raised to Support the Livescribe Platform
Sep. 9, 2010 (Business Wire) -- Livescribe Inc., (www.livescribe.com) maker of the award-winning Echo™ and Pulse™ smartpens, today announced it secured $39 million in Series C financing, bringing the total investment in the company to approximately $100 million since its launch in 2007. Crosslink Capital led the round, joined by Scale Venture Partners, as well as investments from Qualcomm, TransLink Capital, Presidio Ventures, Keating Capital and existing investors VantagePoint Venture Partners, Lionhart and Aeris Capital. In conjunction with this announcement, Michael Stark, co-founder of Crosslink Capital, and Rory O’Driscoll, managing director of Scale Venture Partners, joined the Livescribe Board of Directors.
“This support from major strategic investors is a great acknowledgment of our success to date and the opportunities ahead,” said Jim Marggraff, Livescribe CEO and founder. “With this funding and the contribution of Michael and Rory on the board, Livescribe is well positioned for tremendous growth and continued leadership in the digital management of written and spoken information.”
The Series C financing round follows the recent announcement of Livescribe’s next-generation smartpen, Echo, as well as a preview of future communication and collaboration tools, marking a significant advancement in paper-based computing and personal and professional information management.
“As the concept of personal cloud computing continues to gain momentum, Livescribe’s ability to connect notes and audio with the cloud readily positions the company for the future of personal computing,” said Michael Stark, co-founder of Crosslink Capital. “Crosslink regards Livescribe as the clear market leader in smartpen solutions and believes that it has a product roadmap and management team to lead this market as it expands.”
With nearly 500,000 smartpens sold since 2008, Livescribe will use this new round of funding to expand into new markets, advance the company’s technology platform in the area of communication and collaboration and enable more seamless integration with existing workflows and applications. This includes software and tools developed by recently acquired Zoomii Learning, Inc., which allows consumers, educators and business professionals to share notes and audio from paper as an interactive Pencast PDF and send via e-mail or integrate directly with online applications and services including Google Docs and Facebook.
"ScaleVP is a longtime believer in disruptive low-cost computing, and Livescribe's innovative, paper-based computing platform has clearly brought a revolution to the education and enterprise markets," said Rory O'Driscoll, managing director, Scale Venture Partners. "I look forward to working with Jim and the team to help accelerate growth and market development for Livescribe products."
“Livescribe’s innovative convergence of audio and writing has essentially added a new dimension to capturing and sharing information and we believe that future capabilities will enhance this experience further," said Nagraj Kashyap, vice president of Qualcomm Ventures. “The technology enables a variety of current and future applications, and Livescribe has positioned itself well to capitalize on these opportunities.”
About Livescribe
Located in Oakland, Calif., Livescribe has developed a new low-cost mobile computing platform, which is fundamentally advancing the way people capture, access and share written and spoken information. The Echo and Pulse smartpens revolutionize the act of writing by recording and linking speech to handwriting, so users never miss a word. For more information, visit Livescribe at www.livescribe.com.
About Anoto Group AB
Anoto is the world leading company behind the unique technology for digital pen and paper, which enables fast and reliable transmission of handwritten text into a digital format. Anoto operates through a global partner network that focuses on user-friendly forms solutions for efficient capture, transmission and storage of data within different business segments, e.g. healthcare, bank and finance, transport and logistics and education. The Anoto Group has around 110 employees, offices in Lund (head office), Boston and Tokyo. The Anoto share is traded on the Small Cap list of OMX Nordic Exchange in Stockholm under the ticker ANOT. For more information: www.anoto.com.
Livescribe
Jody Farrar
jfarrar@livescribe.com
or
Edelman
for Livescribe
Lynsey Kehrli, 650-762-2858
lynsey.kehrli@edelman.com
