Charles River Ventures (CRV) is a

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

firm focused on early-stage investments in technology. The firm was founded in 1970 to commercialize research that came out of

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

. Its name comes from the

Charles River The Charles River ( Massachusett: ''Quinobequin)'' (sometimes called the River Charles or simply the Charles) is an river in eastern Massachusetts. It flows northeast from Hopkinton to Boston along a highly meandering route, that doubles b ...

History

The firm has raised over $4.3 billion since inception across 18 funds. Upon closing of the 16th fund, the firm rebranded to CRV. Prior to that, CRV's 15th fund closed in February 2012 with $375 million of investor commitments. CRV's 14th fund raised $320 million of commitments. In 2013, it purchased a large portion of Pebble Technology for 15 million dollars and is credited as the primary reason why Pebble was sold to

Fitbit Fitbit (stylized as fitbit) is an American consumer electronics and fitness company. It produces wireless-enabled wearable technology, physical fitness monitors and activity trackers such as smartwatches, pedometers and monitors for heart rate, ...

in December 2016. This netted CRV nearly 40 million dollars. Among CRV's portfolio companies are

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, Aveksa,

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, ChipCom,

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, Crushpath,

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, Drift, Earbits,

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, mabl,

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, PillPack,

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, SimpliVity, Sonus Networks,

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, Stella, Stratus Technologies,

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Vignette Corporation Vignette Corporation was a company that offered a suite of content management, web portal, collaboration, document management, and records management software. Targeted at the enterprise market, Vignette offered products under the name StorySer ...

Yammer Yammer () is an enterprise social networking service that is part of the Microsoft 365 family of products. It is used mainly for private communication within organizations but is also used for networks spanning various organizations. Access to a ...

, and

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References

Venture Firm Is Giving Loans a Try
The New York Times, November 1, 2006

The New York Times, July 12, 2004

External links

* Venture capital firms of the United States Financial services companies established in 1970 1970 establishments in Massachusetts {{US-private-equity-company-stub