Tech Roundup: Virident Inc. Raises $21 Million in Funding, Cisco Shares Jump 5.7 Percent, and More

Virident Inc., a Milpitas-based company that specializes in flash-based storage class memory, announced this week that it has just completed a $21 million Series C funding, led by its existing investor, the Palo Alto-based Globespan Capital Partners, with additional investment by Cisco Systems, the Santa Clara-based Intel Capital, the Menlo Park-based Sequoia Capital, the East Palo Alto-based Artiman Capital, and an unnamed storage solutions provider. To date, Virident has raised more than $50 million in equity funding.

This announcement comes on the heels of the release of the company’s latest product, the Virident FlashMAX MLC, a PCIe storage class memory solution that offers enterprises unconditional performance and the industry’s highest storage capacity, at 1.4 TB, in a low-profile form factor.  

Milpitas-based Vuclip, the world’s largest independent mobile video service, announced this week that, according to industry metrics collected by the firm Ground Truth, Vuclip has surpassed all other mobile video providers in the U.S. with regards to page views and sessions per unique user. Vuclip also said it has reached significant milestones recently, by serving its five-millionth video to consumers worldwide, and having more than 30 million unique users per month.

Cisco Systems, the largest tech employer in Milpitas, announced its financial results for the end of the first quarter of fiscal year 2012 this week. According to Bloomberg, shares rose to 43 cents each, though analysts on average had predicted 39. Cisco CEO John Chambers said he has been hard at work on a company turnaround to increase profits, including eliminating jobs, scaling back on operating expenses and reconfiguring a management structure that has been shown to slow down decision making. He said the company has also refocused its attention on its two main products—switches and routers. Cisco shares rose 5.7 percent to $18.67 Thursday, the largest one-day gain for the company in three months.

Milpitas-based Nuforce released its latest product this week as well—the Dia DAC, a digital audio converter and amplifier for home audio-video and streaming devices. Nuforce says, by users plugging their devices into the Dia’s optical or coaxial inputs, the Dia improves devices’ audio by bypassing the internal built-in digital-to-analog converters found in most audio-video equipment and performs the function separately. The Dia can be used with TVs, gaming systems, satellite receivers, BluRay players and more. The Dia’s suggested retail price is $299, and the device weighs about 1 pound.

Milpitas-based Dialogic Inc., a provider of communications technologies that power advanced networks, announced its third quarter financial results this week. Over the second quarter of 2011, revenues were $47.4 million, down from $55.8 million. However, the company indicated it had achieved a gross margin percentage that was up from 59 percent to 60, which was the highest in the company’s history. Operating expenses were also down nearly $1 million, at $37.3 million, from $38.2 million last quarter.