Xfire To Fly Solo Again, Raises $4 Million From Intel Capital

Robin Wauters currently works as a staff writer for TechCrunch and lead editor of Virtualization.com. Aside from his professional blogging activities, he’s an entrepreneur, event organizer, occasional board adviser and angel investor but most importantly an all-round startup champion. Wauters lives and works in Belgium, a tiny country in Europe. He can often be found working from his home or... ? Learn More

Exclusive - Xfire, which operates a social service used by 19 million gamers, has raised $4 million in fresh funding from Intel Capital and unnamed angel investors.

As a result of the capital injection, Xfire is severing the ties with Titan Gaming, the company that acquired them from Viacom a little over a year ago.

Both Xfire and Titan will henceforth operate independently from one another.

In addition to the spin-off and funding news, Xfire has also announced a trio of new execs joining its leadership team; Titan Gaming co-founder Mark Donovan will serve as President, Juston Brommel as CMO and Autumn Radtke as Director of Business Development.

Xfire provides a social communication platform targeted specifically at gamers, with features like group text and voice chats and user-generated content sharing tools such as screenshots, videos and live game broadcasts.

Newly appointed Xfire President Mark Donovan pitches the service as a sort of “Facebook meets Skype for gamers”. Very meta!

Either way, the company says it supports a lively ecosystem that currently comprises ‘hundreds of game publisher partners’ and more than 19 million end users.

Intel Capital joins the following early-stage investors in backing Xfire: Tomorrow Ventures, Clearstone Venture Partners principals William Quigley and Jim Armstrong, PriceGrabber co-founder Kamran Pourzanjani, and MP3.com founder Michael Robertson.

Donovan tells me Xfire originally received up to a Series C financing round since its founding, followed by an investment of ‘several millions of dollars’ by Viacom during the latter’s ownership of the company. He estimates that roughly $44 million has been injected into the company to date.

Xfire is a messaging and chat client for gamers that offers a number of features that fit seamlessly into the PC gaming experience. Xfire users can locate their friends and see who is online currently and what games are being played, XFire users can then join their friend’s game with one click from the Xfire client and chat inside the game window while playing with their friends. Xfire also provides gamers with server tracking tools, a P2P...

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Intel Capital, Intel’s global investment organization, makes equity investments in innovative technology start-ups and companies worldwide. Intel Capital invests in a broad range of companies offering hardware, software, and services targeting enterprise, home, mobility, health, consumer Internet, semiconductor manufacturing and cleantech. Since 1991, Intel Capital has invested more than US$9.7 billion in over 1,100 companies in 48 countries. In that timeframe, 189 portfolio companies have gone public on various exchanges around the world and 258 were acquired or participated...

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Greylock, IVP And Benchmark Capital Are Part Of Dropbox’s $4 Billion Valuation Round

Leena Rao currently works as a writer for TechCrunch. She recently finished graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where she studied business journalism and videography. From 2004 to 2007, she helped lead Congresswoman Carloyn Maloney’s community outreach and relations efforts in New York City. She graduated from Columbia University in 2003, where she was... ? Learn More

A month ago, we revealed that Index Ventures will lead Dropbox’s new, massive funding round, which values the company at $4 billion. Now TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington has revealed in a Tweet that venture firms Greylock and Benchmark Capital are also part of the round. We’ve also heard from sources that IVP is part of the round as well. We’re still unclear how large the round will be.

As Michael reported in August, the company was reportedly valued at one point at $5 billion or more. But the uncertainty in the financial markets and Dropbox’s desire to get specific investors on board resulted in a lower valuation.

We’ve also heard there’s a relatively large investor syndicate, so perhaps more firms will be participating in the round. Dropbox previously raised $7.2 million from Y Combinator, Hadi Partovi, Ali Partovi, Pejman Nozad, Accel Partners, and Sequoia.

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Freestyle Capital Now More Formal With $27 Million Fund

MG Siegler has been writing for TechCrunch since 2009. He covers the web, mobile, social, big companies, small companies, essentially everything. And Apple. A lot. Prior to TechCrunch, he covered various technology beats for VentureBeat. Originally from Ohio, MG attended the University of Michigan. He’s previously lived in Los Angeles where he worked in Hollywood and in San Diego where... ? Learn More

For the past few years, longtime entrepreneurs Josh Felser and Dave Samuel have been investing in seed and early-stage startups under the name “Freestyle Capital”. Now that a few of the nearly 30 companies in their portfolio are starting to exit, they decided to make things more formal. Today at TechCrunch Disrupt, they’re officially unveiling Freestyle Capital — and they’re doing so with a new $27 million fund.

Freestyle will operate out of San Francisco and will feature Felser and Samuel as the two founding partners. Additionally, they have entrepreneurs Joe Stump, Lane Becker, and David Bill on board as advisors. The plan is to use the new fund to continue their established investment trends, investing anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 in young startups, typically.

The two hope to differentiate themselves in the VC field because of their entrepreneurial experience. The pair co-founded two companies that both had successful exits (Crackle and Spinner.com). Just as important as the money will be the advice and guidance that Felser and Samuel offer startups.

Of their 27 listed investments, three have already exited: About.me, BackType, and CoTweet. They’re also investors in Formspring, Get Satisfaction (which Becker co-founded), SimpleGeo (which Stump co-founded), Typekit, Yobongo, and others.

Felser will be on stage as both a judge today and a panelist during a VC talk on Wednesday at Disrupt. Freestyle also has one new portfolio company launching at Disrupt in a couple days.

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