WI Harper Group and Charles River Ventures Jointly Invest in Maxthon, Creators of the Popular Maxthon Browser.MENLO PARK Menlo Park. 1 Residential city (1990 pop. 28,040), San Mateo co., W Calif.; inc. 1874. Electronic equipment and aerospace products are manufactured in the city. Menlo College and a Stanford Univ. research institute are there. 2 Uninc. , Calif. & BEIJING -- WI Harper Group (WIH WIH What I Have WIH War Is Hell WIH Who Is Here ) and Charles River Charles River River, eastern Massachusetts, U.S. The longest river wholly in the state, it flows into Boston Bay after a course of about 80 mi (130 km). Navigable for about 7 mi (11 km), its estuary separates the cities of Boston and Cambridge. Ventures (CRV CRV Curve CRV Crew Return Vehicle (NASA) CRV California Redemption Value CRV Cassa Di Risparmio Di Vignola (Italian bank) CRV Call Reference Value (telecommunications) ) today announced that they have jointly made an investment in Beijing-based Maxthon, the originators of the Maxthon Browser See Maxthon. , which has been downloaded more than 55 million times since 2003. CRV led the Series B investment, joining early investors, WI Harper Group and Morten Lund Morten Lund, (born April 3, 1973) is an entrepreneur from Copenhagen, Denmark. Along with Soren Kenner, Lund is founder and managing partner of LundKenner, a venture capital firm focusing on technology ventures. , a seed investor in Skype, in providing Maxthon with funds to further fuel the company's already rapid growth. "We are excited to work with Charles River Ventures. The people at CRV have proven to us that they have the experience to help us build our company and take it to the next level," said Jeff Chen, CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. and founder, Maxthon. "Although we have been adding millions of new users every month on our own, and have been profitable since our inception, we are excited to give them a stake in our future and to partner with them to execute our common vision." "As the only investor in Maxthon's Series A financing, we are excited to have such a reputable VC firm like CRV to lead this new round of financing, and look forward to working with CRV and the company to expand its business globally," said David Zhang, Managing Director of WI Harper Group and head of its China operation. "We are very glad that our help contributed to Maxthon's success to date and we are more than pleased to continue our local support in China." "Underlying this fundamental change is a new architecture required at the user entry point," said Bill Tai, general partner, Charles River Ventures. "Maxthon users have been adding nearly one million new instances a week for a reason -- this team has the right vision for where the web will head, and has already implemented the first stage. We are excited to work with them to help fuel the next step and beyond." Safa Rashtchy, Managing Director and Senior Internet Analyst at Piper Jaffray Piper Jaffray & Co. (NYSE: PJC), often shortened to just Piper Jaffray or PiperJaffray, is a U.S. middle-market investment banking firm based in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is a focused on delivering financial advice, investment products and transaction execution who has been following Maxthon said, "In the new era of Internet, we believe application functionality will expand beyond the operating system operating system (OS) Software that controls the operation of a computer, directs the input and output of data, keeps track of files, and controls the processing of computer programs. into the desktops and the web; the point of personalization and delivery will become more important. We believe Maxthon and its organic growth is representative of this trend." Netanel Jacobsson, Founding Maxthon Partner & Senior Vice President, continued, "There is no other firm better suited to go on this adventure with us. The partners at Charles River Ventures possess a genuine passion for us, the space, and our collective potential. They have shown us a deep network and have an experience base that will prove crucial as we move forward. We could tell from our interaction that we would be partners -- when we are together we 'light up' because we share the same vision and energy, and have fun working together." About Maxthon Read more about Maxthon on the Maxthon Blog at www.maxthon.com/blog. Maxthon is the originator of one of the world's most popular Internet Browsers and associated development platform for plug-ins. Maxthon's core product is a powerful, customizable user interface for the web that goes beyond the notion of a common 'browser' as it enables users to run web-based and 'Internet aware' applications. Maxthon utilizes the Internet Explorer Microsoft's Web browser, which comes with Windows starting with Windows 98. Commonly called "IE," versions for Mac and Unix are also available. Internet Explorer is the most widely used Web browser on the market. It has also been the browser engine in AOL's Internet access software. rendering to provide basic browsing functionality and adds value with many additional features such as an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) A syndication format that was developed by Netscape in 1999 and became very popular for aggregating updates to blogs and the news sites. RSS has also stood for "Rich Site Summary" and "RDF Site Summary. detector & reader, super drag & drop functionality, superior content filtering & ad blocking capabilities, mouse gesture programmability, podcast support and tabbed browsing among others. During 2005, Maxthon received the Red Herring Red Herring A preliminary registration statement that must be filed with the SEC describing a new issue of stock (IPO) and the prospects of the issuing company. Notes: Asia 100 award and was named one of the best 100 products by PC World magazine. Since its inception in 2003, Maxthon users have downloaded the product more than 55 million times. Please visit www.maxthon.com/blog for more information. About WI Harper Group With close to $400M under management, WI Harper is one of the first U.S.-based venture capital firms Name Location Founding date Managing Partners/Directors Specialty Capital managed 5AM Ventures Menlo Park, CA; Waltham, MA 2002 John Diekman, PhD (managing partner), Scott Rocklage, PhD (managing partner), Andrew Schwab (managing partner) life sciences $200M [1] to create a value-adding bridge between the United States and Greater China. For nearly a decade, WI Harper has been building companies internationally by facilitating the flow of capital, technology and management best practices across both sides of the Pacific. The Firm is focused on fueling companies at early expansion stage within Internet, wireless, digital media and life science/healthcare sectors. WI Harper's star portfolios include Beijing Xinwei, Bridge Pharmaceutical, Cardiva Medical, Commerce One, Celestry, Cwill, DivX, Focus Media China, Intraware, Fantastic Corporation, iKang Healthcare, Panorama Stock, SirF, Stream Machine, and Verisilicon. For more information, visit www.wiharper.com. About Charles River Ventures Founded in 1970, Charles River Ventures (CRV), is one of the industry's oldest and most successful early-stage venture capital firms. CRV is dedicated to helping exceptional entrepreneurs execute on their ideas to build their companies into category leaders. The firm currently focuses on start-ups that are driving fundamental change in information technology with an emphasis on mobility, the digitization of media, and open-source. The firm's investment returns have consistently been among the highest in the industry, driven by its portfolio companies developing into category leaders. CRV's portfolio of start ups has included companies such as Amgen, Cascade, Continental CableVision, Chipcom, CIENA, iBasis, MCI (1) (Media Control Interface) A high-level programming interface from Microsoft and IBM for controlling multimedia devices. It provides commands and functions to open, play and close the device. (2) (Microwave Communications Inc. , Sybase, Sonus Networks, and Vignette. CRV has offices in Boston and Menlo Park, Calif. For more information, visit www.crv.com. |
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