AOptix, a Campbell, Calif.-based company that makes optical communications and iris biometrics-based software for the government and commercial markets, has closed a $42 million Series E round of funding by existing investors Clearstone Venture Partners, DAG Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Northgate Capital and W Capital Partners, along with new investor, True Ventures. The 12-year-old [...]

Xfire, the social gaming service, got $4 million in VC backing from Intel Capital. In conjunction with the financing, Xfire has also strengthened the executive team by adding Mark Donovan as President, Juston Brommel as Chief Marketing Officer and Autumn Radtke as Director of Business Development. Xfire was acquired by Titan Gaming from Viacom in August 2010. With this round of financing, Xfire has split from Titan Gaming to operate independently. Xfire is already backed by several prominent angel investors, including Tomorrow Ventures, Clearstone Venture Partners principals William Quigley and Jim Armstrong, PriceGrabber co-founder Kamran Pourzanjani, and MP3.com founder Michael Robertson.

Google has lured former Clearstone Venture Capital venture partner Anil Patel onto its corporate development team as a principal. Patel, who could not be reached for comment, will remain in an advisory role with Clearstone, according to the VC firm (his bio doesn’t say so yet, though). Patel, who joined Clearstone in 2006, left over [...]

The venture industry has suffered for more than a decade from intractable roadblocks to portfolio company liquidity. This strategic difficulty is evident in the alternative investments holdings of the University of California, where the Regents have invested in 84 venture funds, 20 between the years of 2001 and 2004. peHUB took a look at the [...]

Is the venture model broken? You’ve heard the question posed repeatedly in the past few years. So, what is the answer? Maybe it is. Probably it isn’t. We often forget during the strains and distractions of a deep down cycle that economies go up and down. Eventually things turn higher again. But that is not [...]

Mumbai-based online gaming company Games2Win has raised $6 million in Series B financing from Clearstone Venture Partners and Silicon Valley Bank. The company closed a $5 million Series A round in 2007 from the same investors.

Clearstone Venture Partners has seed funded CupidsPlay, a dating Web site that allows participants to interact through social games. Specifics on the funding were not publicized; CupidsPlay is privately held and located in Bellevue, WA. The company was founded in 2010.

(VentureBeat) — Virtualization giant VMware announced today that it has acquired an IT analytics startup called Integrien for $100 million.

Irvine, Calif.-based Integrien offers systems monitoring software, similar to IBM’s Tivoli, with an emphasis on up-to-the-minute information about problems with your infrastructure. Microsoft’s Sidekick unit signed up as a customer to make sure it doesn’t have another outage like it did last fall. Itegrien was funded by Clearstone Venture Partners, Tech Coast Angels, Acartha Group, and Mariner Capital Ventures, most recently in an $8 million round announced in May.

Get ready, personalized shopping services are coming to an online site near you.

Earlier today, Santa Monica, Calif.-based ThisNext announced that it has acquired Stylehive, a collaborative beauty and fashion network. The company also launched Curatemedia, a corporate brand that will operate ThisNext and Stylehive.

The acquisition of San Francisco-based Stylehive, which previously had raised about $4.3 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners, follows last month’s purchase of StyleFeeder by Time Inc. for an undisclosed amount.

This morning, Peacock Equity Fund is expected to announce that it has led a $9 million Series C funding round of the Rubicon Project, a Los Angeles-based provider of Internet advertising optimizing services and infrastructure. Peacock invested $6 million in the round, which also included commitments from existing investors Clearstone Venture Partners and the Mayfield [...]