Friday Funding Roundup

While no discernible thread connects the wireless startups that have announced funding rounds this week, the established players are definitely hot to invest in strategic wireless technology right now.

A few cases in point:

DARTDevices Corp: Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) has pumped an undisclosed amount of strategic series A funding into this three-year-old Mountain View, Calif.-based company that develops device-to-device synchronization, management and security software for consumer software.

DARTDevices' programs allow wired and wireless distribution of applications, games, and information such as music, photos, video, calendars and data, across mobile phones, PCs, Internet servers, PDAs, MP3 players, and other gadgets, according to Motorola. It's not hard to see how this technology could become increasingly important to the world's No. 2 mobile phone maker and also spark some interest in its connected home division.

Personeta Inc. : Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) has given this Naperville, Ill.-based startup an undisclosed amount as the pair work together on systems for application and service delivery over fixed and mobile networks.

Six-year old Personeta has been a Cisco partner for a while now. Most notably, the companies have been collaborating on a converged fixed-mobile system for Russian mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), with Personeta’s TappS NSC product working with a range of Cisco products.

The firm last received funding in December 2005 and has raised around $29 million overall, not counting the new Cisco investment.

Meanwhile, VC firms have been active this week as well:

Aperto Networks Inc. : WiMax investors are a loyal and patient bunch. Milpitas, Calif.-based Aperto has just grabbed another $19 million in funding in a follow-on round to its Series E funding. Founded in 1999, the WiMax base-station vendor has so far hoovered up $139 million in venture capital. This latest round was led by GunnAllen Venture Partners .

Whisher Technologies: Oddly-named Spanish WiFi networking firm Whisher, which claims to be launching the first social network powered by WiFi, grabbed an unknown amount of cash from Swisscom AG (NYSE: SCM) and the European arm of Benchmark Capital . What Whisher's product translates to in practice is a WiFi hotspot finder that lets users find other people with the Whisher application in the vicinity and chat online with them.

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung