Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, a former lead scientist at AdMob and a onetime Google engineer, says that Drawbridge–the company she founded in late 2010–is solving a problem Google couldn’t: creating an advertising solution that bridges the gap between online and mobile. The company today announced it raised $6.5 million in Series A funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & [...]

Most everyone knows the story of the “PayPal Mafia.” The term refers to how a network of founders and early employees of the online payment services company—people such as Peter Thiel, Max Levchin, Ken Howery, Luke Nosek, Roelof Botha, Elon Musk, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, Jawed Karim and Reid Hoffman, among others—leveraged their connections to [...]

PeHUB has confirmed a Wall Street Journal report that Accel Partners plans to raise a combined $2 billion for four separate funds this year. Accel Partners, the first and largest VC investor in Facebook, is in the market with IDG Capital Partners for two funds targeting China, but it has not yet approached its limited [...]

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Accel Partners, the first VC investor in Facebook, is “raising four new funds this year with an overall target of more than $2 billion.” It cited “people familiar with the matter.” peHUB sought comment from two partners at Accel. We will update this story if we hear back. [...]

Remarkable founders don’t come across as “silvery tongued devils,” says Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital. Rather, they’re often shy, quiet and rather withdrawn. That was one of the observations Moritz made last night in a one-hour Q&A at startup incubator Kicklabs. The Xconomy-hosted event was provocatively titled “Michael Moritz Unplugged,” but the star VC didn’t [...]

Nihal Mehta is no Super Angel, but it’s likely he will have a big impact on wireless startups. Mehta and three other University of Pennsylvania graduates are today announcing the launch of their mobile-focused, seed stage investment fund, ENIAC Ventures. Based in New York, the angel fund raised “a couple million dollars” from strategic LPs [...]

(Reuters) – U.S. antitrust regulators gave Google Inc approval to buy mobile advertising rival AdMob, after months of delay and rumor that Google was headed for a court fight with government officials over the transaction. The Federal Trade Commission said in a statement on Friday that it was concerned that two top mobile advertising networks [...]

(Reuters) – Lawyers at a U.S. regulator plan to recommend that the government try to block Google’s proposed acquisition of mobile advertising firm AdMob on antitrust grounds, a source familiar with the matter said.   “The staff (at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission) believes there is a significant competitive problem and they are prepared to [...]

The Federal Trade Commission has been talking to Google about AdMob for several weeks and has issued a formal second request for information, Google said today.

Given Google’s dominance in search and the Obama administration’s heightened scrutiny of tech mergers, the FTC’s interest in AdMob is not a surprise.

Google had to wait nearly a year before federal regulators last year allowed it to acquire DoubleClick, which boosted Google’s ability to offer display ads. Also last year, Google abandoned its proposal to share search advertising revenue with Yahoo by running ads against Yahoo search queries after Microsoft and others complained and the Justice Department intervened.

Google has agreed to buy AdMob, a San Mateo, Calif.-based mobile advertising marketplace, for $750 million in stock. AdMob has raised over $46 million in VC funding, from firms like Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital and DFJ Growth Fund.