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.
