Venture capitalists during this year's second quarter were investing nearly three times more cash in Utah companies than they did when the recession was gaining momentum a year ago.
Some $93 million poured into those companies from April through June, according to the MoneyTree Report, a quarterly study of venture-capital investment. A year ago in the same period: just $36 million.
The new figure represents the most venture capital since the first quarter of 2005, and 2009's second quarter is the third-best quarter since 2001, says the report published by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. It's based on data from Thomson Financial.
Joe Strain, Pricewaterhouse senior manager in Salt Lake City, could not be reached Thursday for comment about the new figures.
Most of the money -- $66.5 million -- went to Fusion-io, the Salt Lake City-based maker of high-speed storage devices. The firm earlier this year hired Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, to be its chief scientist.
Fusion-io acknowledges receiving $47.5 million in April from a group of investors led by venture-capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners in Menlo Park, Calif.
But the remaining $19 million was invested 13 months earlier, said Robert Brumfield, a spokesman for the 200-employee company. It came from New Enterprise Associates, a venture-capital company whose offices are in the U.S., China and India. The money went to Fusion Multisystems, another name for Fusion-io.
Fusion-io packages flash memory chips on palm-sized cards that are inserted into computer servers. Processors can retrieve data stored on the chips faster and more cheaply than from mechanical spinning disks in traditional storage systems linked to them by slower connections, the company says.
Fusion-io is using the latest investment to increase production of its products and develop new storage devices. The company has over 600 customers, including MySpace, Wine.com, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Dell.
"This money is an expansion round that allows us to not only ramp up our sales and marketing as we expand our customer base, but also to ramp up our support and manufacturing capabilities and our infrastructure," co-founder Rick White said.
» Apple Medical Services, Kamas, a financial services company, $250,000.
» Catheter Connections, Park City, a medical devices firm, $1.3 million.
» Control4, Salt Lake City, a networking equipment company, $17.4 million.
» Jive Communications, Orem, a telecommunications company, $150,000.
» Schillinger Road Discovery, no location available, a financial services firm, $300,000.
» Solera Networks, South Jordan, a networking equipment firm, $7.1 million.
