Venture Wire: Motricity Acquires M7 Networks For Adding 'Community' Features To Content
August 4, 2005
By Rachel Nielsen
A month after closing a $30 million financing, Motricity Inc. has acquired M7 Networks Inc. in a deal that could let Motricity add interactive features to its selection of mobile applications.
Motricity's chief executive, Ryan Wuerch, wouldn't disclose the amount paid for M7 or describe the structure of the deal, which closed last Friday. However, he did say M7's investors are getting a stake in Motricity, which suggests they received at least some of their payment in stock.
M7, founded in 2000, has raised at least $15 million from a number of high-profile investors, including Qualcomm Ventures, Enterprise Partners Venture Capital, Sienna Ventures and Sweden's Investor AB.
Motricity has a huge catalog of ringtones, games and other content for mobile devices, as well as Fuel, which it describes as its "mobile content distribution platform," designed to speed up the time-to-market and simplify the delivery of mobile content. Cingular Wireless LLC is a user the Fuel platform.
Other Motricity customers include Verizon Wireless, China Unicom Corp., mmO2 PLC's O2 unit and Amazon.com Inc.
M7's "application community platform" enables mobile features like gaming tournaments and buddy lists. Wuerch said Motricity will make use of current M7 applications and create new ones, such as a program that allows for legal music downloads.
M7 will become a division of Motricity and will maintain an office in La Jolla, Calif., where it is currently based. Motricity has its headquarters in Durham, N.C.
All of the 20 or employees at M7 will be staying on board, said Wuerch, except for M7 Chief Executive William E. Erickson. Motricity had over 200 employees as of July.
Including its recent $30 million round, the company's second, Motricity has raised $57 million in financing to date.