Comcast Ventures, the venture capital fund aimed at supporting and investing in start-up technology companies, will be folded into the media giant’s business development unit, the company said Friday.

Comcast Ventures will continue to operate under business development chief Sam Schwartz and focus on companies that support Comcast initiatives like broadband and streaming video. News of the change was first reported by CNBC. 

“Comcast Ventures has been a valuable innovation pipeline, providing insight into adjacent industries and investment opportunities,” Comcast said in a statement. “We are aligning our approach to venture investing more closely with our business units and repositioning Comcast Ventures and its fund under the strategic business development team at Comcast Cable.  Our business development teams across the company continue to invest in new technology and businesses, which we believe will yield more strategic opportunities and benefits for Comcast and the companies in which we invest.  We will continue to support our existing portfolio companies through investment and strategic partnership.”

Comcast Ventures was formed in 2011 after the combination of Comcast Interactive Capital  and NBCUniversal’s Peacock Equity Fund and has funded a number of startups, including Cheddar (sold to Altice USA in 2019),  shared-ride service Lyft (which went public in 2019) and fantasy sports company FanDuel (sold to Flutter Entertainment in 2018). Its current portfolio includes more than 120 companies ranging from online video platform Vimeo, digital media company Vox Media and content discovery platform Taboola. The unit was headed by Amy Banse, who said in September that she would retire after 30 years with the company.  Banse has agreed to stay as a senior advisor to the company through the end of 2021.  

Comcast said Amy Banse, the company’s executive VP and managing director and head of funds for Comcast Ventures is retiring after almost three decades with the cable giant.

Banse will remain with Comcast through 2021 as a senior advisor to Comcast’s executive leadership team.

“I’m extremely grateful to Amy for the incredible work she has done on behalf of Comcast for so many years, from launching our cable network portfolio, to creating new opportunities for our company as we excelled through the digital age, and successfully leading our venture capital business,” said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, “Most importantly though, I’d like to thank Amy for her terrific friendship and her strategic advice on so many initiatives beyond her core roles, which has been invaluable to me and to the growth of our company.”

Comcast CFO Mike Cavanagh will oversee Comcast Ventures, effective immediately. He  will be advised by former CFO Michale Angelakis, now CEO of Atairos, during a transition period.

“Amy has been an outstanding leader of Comcast Ventures,” said Mr. Cavanagh. “She and her team of top investors have built an impressive portfolio bringing significant value to Comcast through both strategic insights and financial returns. I’m looking forward to continuing to work with Amy in her Senior Advisor role.”

Banse joined Comcast in 1991 as an in-house attorney responsible for Comcast Cable’s acquisition of programming and content. She expanded her responsibilities, overseeing the development of Comcast’s cable network portfolio. In 2005 she founded Comcast Interactive Media.

For the past 10 years, Banse has overseen Comcast Ventures, which has invested in more than 100 companies.

Comcast Ventures, the venture capital arm of Comcast Corp., said National Basketball Association player, author and entrepreneur Andre Iguodala has joined its Catalyst Fund as a venture partner.

Iguodala is a three-time NBA champion as a member of the Golden State Warriors and currently plays for the Miami Heat.  He has also served as first vice president of the NBA Players Association. The author of best seller “The Sixth Man,” Iguodala also is a successful entrepreneur and investor, funding more than 40 companies.As an investor and a member of the board of directors for Jumia Technologies, Iguodala helped the company grow and go public in April with a billion-dollar IPO.

The Catalyst Fund was formed in 2011 and has supported more than 70 startups with founders from diverse backgrounds through direct investments, and in partnership with leading accelerator programs. The Fund’s portfolio represents companies from multiple industries and sectors including gaming, DTC products, fintech, and enterprise applications.

“We are thrilled to welcome Andre to the Comcast Ventures team,“ said Comcast Ventures’ Head of Funds and Managing Director Amy Banse in a press release. “Andre’s investment experience and network, coupled with his passion for supporting entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds, is a perfect fit for our Catalyst Fund. Together, we can offer early stage companies unique resources for growth, building on our vision of a startup ecosystem full of founders creating technologies for a diverse world.”

Iguodala joins principal Fatima Husain at the Catalyst Fund and will focus investments in companies founded by African American, Latinx, and female entrepreneurs. Husain joined Comcast Ventures in 2019 and was previously a Senior Growth Product Manager at Airbnb.

“I am excited to join the Catalyst and Comcast Ventures teams, which will provide me with the opportunity to advise and work with emerging entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds,” Iguodala said in a press release. “I have admired Comcast NBCUniversal’s commitment to invest in startups with founders who are typically underrepresented in the venture world. Together, we have unique experiences and resources no other venture firm has to help founders grow their companies.”

Comcast named 10 technology startup companies chosen to participate in the inaugural Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Accelerator, powered by Techstars. The program was announced last year. Companies that applied are developing the next generation of media, entertainment, and connectivity companies, Comcast said. They will be in residence at Comcast headquarters in Philadelphia home for 13 weeks in the program, which culminates in a Demo Day on Oct. 11, Comcast said in a release.

Startups in the program receive mentoring from Comcast NBCUniversal business experts es including from the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks, film studios, cable networks, Comcast Ventures and Xfinity products and services, as well as from Techstars’ experts, Comcast said.

RELATED: Four Startups Picked for CableLabs-Backed UpRamp Program

“We are thrilled with the interest in our first accelerator in partnership with Techstars as evidenced by the hundreds of applications from a diverse pool of startups from around the world,” Sam Schwartz, chief business development officer for Comcast, said in the release. “We are excited to mentor and collaborate with these innovative companies who are experimenting in interesting areas related to our business.”

A selection committee of Techstars experts and leaders from several Comcast NBCUniversal business units screened startup applicants working in five areas of focus: Connected Life, Entertainment Everywhere, Next Gen Marketing, Smart Places, and Digital Wellness. 

The 10 companies named by Comcast for the program are:

Alive5, Austin, TX

Alive5 provides businesses with PCI-compliant chat software that allows them to engage and seamlessly accept payments from customers via website, social media accounts, and text messaging.

eyecandylab, Munich, Germany

eyecandylab is a platform of immersive, augmented reality experiences for linear TV.

Orai, Philadelphia, PA

Orai is an artificial intelligence speech coach that helps people improve their public speaking skills with personalized coaching.

Pium, New York City and Seoul, South Korea

Pium is an IoT-powered platform for a personalized olfactory experience.

RELATED: Ideation Abounds in Adaptive Power Challenge

Polycade, Los Angeles, CA

Polycade is a modern arcade gaming console powered by a platform through which developers can build and sell games.

Portl Media, Toronto, Canada

Portl Media is a network of personalized media and entertainment experiences for rideshare vehicles.

Tally Interactive, Toronto, Canada

Tally is a mobile platform for live interactive game shows.

Thinker Tinker, Los Angeles, CA

Thinker Tinker creates companions that engage children through an innovative blend of traditional hands-on tactile play and digital interaction.

Trapica Labs, New York, NY

Trapica allows marketing campaigns on social networks to reach the right audiences at the right time by leveraging an artificial intelligence algorithm that autonomously optimizes targeting decisions in real time.

WiARframe, Singapore

WiARframe is a prototyping tool that allows creatives to effortlessly craft interactive augmented reality content, without any coding, 3D knowledge, or expensive equipment.

For more on the program see www.ComcastNBCULIFT.com.

Comcast Ventures participated in a $3.275 million seed round in Blockdaemon, a startup that has developed a “nodes as a service” Platform to enable businesses to simplify and manage blockchain applications.

Boldstart, MState, Plug and Play and some angels from Silicon Valley also participated in the seed financing.

Blockdaemon, founded in 2017, plans to use the funds to grow its engineering team from 10 to 20 in the next six months, beef up its infrastructure options and help customers run multi-tenant networks for different blockchains, company CEO Konstantin Richter explained in this blog post.

RELATED: Blockchain Technology Moving Into Cable, Advertising Sectors

“We chose a VC round, over a crowdsale, to ensure we have investors with real enterprise chops on deck that can help us run a focused agile development process,” he noted, adding that Blockdaemon is also announcing a new product this week that enables the deployment and connection of public Bitcoin and Ethereum nodes, payable via crypto and credit cards.

Blockdaemon has also set up pricing for public, private and enterprise rollouts.

RELATED: Comcast Partners Up to Forge Secure ‘Blockchain’ Platform to Boost TV Ad Efficiency

Richter is late of Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile, Nokia and PriceWaterhouse, and CTO Arun Kalaiselvan is formerly with Vizbee, Voray, PlaceIQ and Lookbooks. Adam Helfgott, the CEO of Madhive and co-founder of Lookbooks and e-camp, is an advisor to Blockdaemon.

Comcast’s investment in the startup comes as the company gets more deeply involved in Blockchain, a system that creates a trusted way to share digital information from multiple entities while also keeping that core data protected and validated even as those records change using a distributed, decentralized structure.

For its part, Comcast has already been starting to develop Blockchain technologies for connected home and TV advertising applications.

RELATED: Comcast Looking to Link Blockchain to the Connected Home

Last month,Coindesk expanded on Comcast’s interest in blockchain, noting that Comcast Ventures has also provided backing to MState, an accelerator for blockchain startups, and to Blockchange Ventures. Gil Beyda, managing director at Comcast Ventures, told the pub that the VC has established a “blockchain crew” that’s focused on the sector.

Comcast Ventures participated in a $14 million “A” round of funding in BigID, a startup focused on enterprise data protection and privacy for personal data.

Other new investors in the round included ClearSky Security and SAP.iO. Previous investor BOLDstart Ventures also participated in the round, with takes BigID’s funding total to about $16.1 million.

BigID said it will use the funds to shore up its engineering team in Israel and expand its global sales and marketing efforts for its “data-driven personal information (PI) protection, privacy and governance platform.”

The company said its platform combines machine learning with identity intelligence to find, track and “de-risk” identity data at petabyte scale.

Founded in 2016, BigID is headquartered in New York, and launched its initial product in mid-2017.  

Tied to the A round, announced in conjunction with CyberTech Israel, BigID said ClearSky Security Managing Director and former Blackstone CISO Jay Leek has joined its board of directors.

“Customers are the lifeblood of any business and unless an organization can properly safeguard the security and privacy of their customer data they will not survive in the digital economy,” Dimitri Sirota, CEO at BigID, said in statement. “Regulations like GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] crystallize the need for companies to understand their data. BigID gives companies a first-of-its-kind way to find, secure and govern their identity data across the data center and cloud. After all, you can’t know your customer unless you first know their data.”

Comcast Ventures and Fifth Wall led a $25 million “B” round in Hippo, a California-based home insurance technology and service startup.

Founded in 2015, Hippo has raised $36 million so far, according to Crunchbase. Hippo closed a $14 million A round in December 2016 that was led by Horizons Ventures along with help from RPM Ventures, Propel Venture Partners, GGV Capital and Pipeline Capital.

The company’s aim is to serve a large swath of underinsured homes with an approach that, it claims, is both cheaper and more modern.

Notably, the company says it uses smart home technology to help detect problems early and, when possible, prevent damage from taking place. For example, the company provides a free water leak sensor with every policy and expects to offer other home-safety products.

Comcast hasn’t announced how it might work more closely with Hippo down the line, but the company has been boosting its focus on smart home technologies and services in recent years. Its Xfinity Home service has more than 1 million subscribers.

RELATED: Comcast Scales Home Automation Services to 15M Subs

The startup holds that its policies are underwritten by insurance companies with nearly $200 billion in assets. It also claims that its policies are up to 25% cheaper to purchase, and customers can obtain quotes in as little as 60 seconds.

Hippo noted that it aims to make its insurance product available to 60% of U.S. homeowners in 2018. Per its web site, the product is currently available in three states: California, Arizona and Texas.

Hippo said the new funding will support expansion and development initiatives planned for this year, including a new customer service center in Austin, Texas, that will become the “hub for Hippo’s claims advocate concierges, along with its insurance operations teams.”

RELATED: Sunrun CEO Touts Benefits of Comcast Deal

“Hippo is reimagining homeowners insurance with a customer-centric model, built from the ground up,” Assaf Wand, Hippo’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. “The company leverages big data, like municipal building records, and innovative technology, such as satellite imagery and smart home devices, to streamline the quote and onboarding experience - quotes in under 60 seconds and sign-up in under three minutes.”

“More and more complex financial purchases are being made online, yet the insurance industry has fallen short of providing homeowners with a digitally delivered product that provides the quality of service consumers deserve,” added Sam Landman, managing director of Comcast Ventures. “We invested in Hippo because the team is executing against their vision to build a more modern, consumer-focused product with proprietary internal tools that we believe will create a sustainable operational advantage.”

CTI Towers, a wireless tower operating company that is majority owned by Comcast Ventures, has inked a deal to acquire the tower portfolio of Mediacom Communications.

The deal is expected to add more than 360 towers to CTI’s total, extending to 1,000-plus the number of the towers owned or managed by CTI.

Based on the latest count from Wireless Estimator, CTI’s updated grand total would put it well inside the top 10 of the largest U.S. tower companies. Crown Castle (40,039) and American Tower (39,389) lead that list.

RELATED: Comcast-Backed Firm Acquires Vyve Towers

“The Mediacom tower acquisition represents CTI’s largest individual transaction since we were founded in 2011,” Tony Peduto, CTI’s CEO, said in a statement. “CTI has demonstrated it is best positioned to lease tower space to the wireless carriers, while protecting the interests of the cable operators.”

Franklin, Mass.-based CTI Towers said the deal comes as wireless carriers look to get a handle on data demands and add capacity cost-efficiently. Those locations include new tower sites alongside small-cell deployments, the company noted.

 “Zoning issues and the timing to get new locations are the biggest challenges carriers face in giving their customers the services they are demanding today, while building the networks to handle the future services such as 5G, including coverage for autonomous vehicles,” Peduto added. “Customers want all the amenities available to them, but few desire a tower built in their neighborhoods to facilitate those amenities,” stated Peduto. “The Mediacom towers are constructed and ready for collocation, and we are pleased to offer an additional group of assets to our customers.”

"Transitioning Mediacom's tower portfolio to CTI will result in a mutually beneficial transaction for both parties," added John Pascarelli, Mediacom's EVP of operations.

Comcast Ventures, the VC arm of Comcast, said it has tapped Kai Bond as principal to lead Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund, a $20 million fund established in 2011 as part of Comcast’s acquisition of NBCU that’s focused on investing in early stage technology startups led by minority entrepreneurs.

RELATED: Comcast Catalyst Fund Backs Visual Search Startup

Bond will be based out of New York and focus on investing in early-stage startups in NYC and other startups led by minority entrepreneurs across the country, Comcast Ventures said.

Bond previously served as the general manager of Samsung Accelerator, and was the founder of pixietv, a smart TV app acquired by Samsung, which led to Bond’s later role as director working on Samsung Extra, an interactive TV application. Bond also founded two gaming companies -- CashPlay Games and SwitchGames – and served as general manager at Hatch Labs, and worked in product, M&A, and strategy roles at IAC, Microsoft, and Gerson Lehrman Group.

Bond also serves as a mentor at Defy Ventures and Techstars. He earned his B.A. in international relations from Wesleyan University.

“I am delighted to welcome Kai Bond to Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund,” Amy Banse, managing director and head of funds for Comcast Ventures, said in a statement. “His network, operational expertise and product knowledge will be an excellent addition to our team, helping us identify new types of investments for the growing Catalyst Fund.”

“Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund’s mission of identifying and funding typically underrepresented groups is a strategy I’m excited to get behind,” Bond added. “I look forward to working with the existing portfolio as well as making new investments in 2017. As Comcast Ventures continues to expand its NYC footprint for seed deals, I am thrilled to work with entrepreneurs in this ecosystem.”

Comcast Ventures has been helping to bankroll several virtual reality startups of late, but it has also earmarked some cash for new company focused on online pet care services.

PetCoach, maker of a digital pet healthcare platform based in Wayne, Pa., said it has secured $2 million in seed funding led by the Comcast VC arm.

PetCoach, led by former founder and CEO of Pet360 and the former chief digital officer of PetSmart Brock Weatherup, said it will use the funds to accelerate a business that helps pet owners (or “Pet Parents,” in the company’s parlance) receive direct advice from certified vets, trainers and other pet care experts.

PetCoach runs its service on a Web site as well as apps for iOS and Android devices. PetCoach is also backed by DreamIt Ventures and Maveron.

“Comcast Ventures provides great strategic insight, access to resources we couldn’t get on our own and deep support as we transform the way Pet Parents think about and engage in the care and wellbeing of their pets,” Weatherup said in a statement.

“We are thrilled to be assisting PetCoach in accelerating its growth and mission within the online pet healthcare industry,” added Sam Landman, managing director at Comcast Ventures. “The team at PetCoach is well-positioned to become the leader in omni-channel pet care.”

Comcast Ventures has expanded its investments in virtual reality startups by joining a $2.5 million seed round in VR game developer Kite & Lightning.

Los Angeles-based Kite & Lightning said its seed round was led by Raine Ventures, with help from Comcast Ventures’s Catalyst Fund, Social Capital, Output Capital, Boost VC and Lytro CEO Jason Rosenthal.

Created in 2011, the Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund  invests in tech companies founded by underrepresented ethnic minority entrepreneurs. Comcast Ventures’ investment in Kite & Lightning follow recent financial backing in other VR-focused startups that include NextVR (live broadcast), Baobab Studios (animated VR) , Felix & Paul (cinematic VR), and AltSpaceVR (social VR).

“Fundamentally, we think, hope and believe that VR is one of the next great technology platforms so are backing what we believe to be emerging winners across a variety of content segments,” Comcast Ventures’ Michelle Gonzalez and Michael Yang noted in this blog post.

Kite & Lightning has already been involved in several VR projects, including an experience for Lionsgate’s Insurgent franchise, and one in 2014 to promote NBC’s The Voice.

Kite & Lightning, which has grown to a team of four following the seed funding, is now working on Bebylon Battle Royale: A Gentleman’s Game, described as a “VR party brawler where you play as selfie stick wielding immortal babies beating up each other.”

Adding to its investments in the emerging virtual reality sector, Comcast Ventures has led a $6.8 million “A” round in Felix & Paul Studios.

Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, LDV Partners, and Phi Group also participated in the round, which was announced earlier this week.

Comcast Ventures’ financial backing of Felix & Paul Studios follows recent investments other VR-facing startups that include Spaces, Baobab Studios, NextVR and AltSpaceVR. Comcast Ventures was also part of a group behind a $50 million “B” round in Meta, an augmented reality (AR) startup founded in 2012.

Felix & Paul Studios is focused on storytelling through cinematic virtual reality, and have developed a “full-stack” VR platform that includes proprietary 3D 360-degree camera systems and a post-production software and process. It has already developed originals such as Nomads and Strangers, worked with existing franchises (Jurassic World, Cirque du Soleil and Wild, among them), as well as individuals such as Bill Clinton and LeBron James.

“We have always wanted to invest in a team focused on premium cinematic virtual reality or live action, camera-shot, stereoscopic 360 video,” Michael Yang, managing director of Comcast Ventures, noted in this blog post about the investment in the Montreal-based VR studio. “Felix Lajeunesse and Paul Raphael were successful film and commercial directors before they stumbled upon Oculus in the early days. They convinced Oculus that virtual reality was not just about gaming, but could also be about immersing an audience in a new type of video experience.”

In addition to the investment, Yang is also joining the Felix & Paul Studios board of directors.

Comcast Ventures is part of a group that participated in a $50 million Series B round in Meta, an augmented reality tech startup founded in 2012.

Meta, which has raised about $73 million so far, said Horizons Ventures Limited, Lenovo, Tencent, Banyan Capital, and GQY also contributed to the B round.

Comcast Ventures’ financial interest in AR follows recent investments in tech and content startups focused on virtual reality (VR), including Spaces, Baobab Studios, NextVR and AltSpaceVR.

“AR has been around for decades but only recently have the requisite technologies become ‘good enough’ to allow a new generation of entrepreneurs to give it a go,” Michael Yang, managing director at Comcast Ventures, noted in thisblog postabout the investment in Meta. “Useful for collaboration and for communication, Meta’s AR products can change the future of work for employees in industries such as architecture, engineering, healthcare, and education, amongst others.”

The startup is now focused on Meta 2, a platform it unveiled at TED 2016 in February. The development kit for Meta 2 is slated to ship in Q3 2016. The kit, which runs $949, includes the Meta 2 AR headset, software development kit, four speaker near-ear audio systems, and a 720p front-facing camera.

Meta  said it will use the new round to build on its hardware and software tech base and for business expansion, including app development. Notably, it will be entering a market segement also being targeted by Microsoft and its AR-focused HoloLens platform. 

“It is incredibly gratifying to have the support of big thinkers and investors who understand the importance of creating a new human-computer interface, anchored in science, Meta CEO Meron Gribetz said in a statement. “Our friends at Tencent, Lenovo, Horizons Ventures, Comcast Ventures and all the other investors really get what we’re doing and why Meta is different from the other players in AR. They understand that the combination of our advanced optical engines along with our neuroscience-based interface design approach are what will create a computing experience that is 100x easier to use and more powerful than traditional form factors.”

The Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund, a unit focused on backing early stage startups led by minority entrepreneurs, has invested in LiveNinja, a company that builds unified communications tools that help businesses and brands improve how they serve and understand their customers.

“As businesses explore new ways of providing premium customer service, one trend has surfaced: messaging,”  William Crowder, managing director, DreamIt Ventures and lead advisor of the Catalyst Fund, said in this blog post. “But as companies from Facebook to WhatsApp provide tools for businesses to use their products to interact with customers, fragmentation emerges.”

Miami-based LiveNinja, he said, helps partners manage this array of communications channels. Its latest product, LiveNinja Messenger, allows brands and companies to start conversations on social media or their own websites and maintain and manage communication across multiple platforms via a link that consolidates a conversation on multiple platforms to one thread.

According to TechCrunch, LiveNinja recent raised a $2 million round of funding  that, in addition to Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund, included Scout Ventures, Anzu Partners,  Citi Ventures, Accelerated Growth Partners and SeedInvest. 

Here’s a bit more about LiveNinja Messenger:

YouNow, a live social network that “connects audiences and broadcasters in real time,” said it has secured $15 million round of funding led by current backers Venrock and Oren Zeev. Comcast Ventures also joined the round as a new investor, said YouNow, which has raised about $26 million, according to CrunchBase.

YouNow, which competes in some ways with Periscope and Meercat, claims to have 100 million user sessions a month and handles more than 50,000 hours of new live-video content created every day.  On average, the daily user of Younow spends 51 minutes per day on the platform, the company said.

YouNow, which has developed apps for iOS and  Android, has a Go Live option that lets users broadcast video to their audiences, along with a discovery tool to find YouTube and Vine stars.  Audiences are rewarded through in-app “virtual good purchases.”

"The addition of Comcast Ventures to our family of backers underscores our success in building a real-time social network that fulfills the needs of a younger, digitally savvy generation that is eager to participate in media and not just consume it,” YouNow founder and CEO  Adi Sideman, said in a statement.

"YouNow has struck a chord with young audiences who crave and are increasingly willing to pay for real-time video-based interactivity,” added Sam Landman, managing director at Comcast Ventures. “YouNow's virtual goods economy is enabling the most dedicated creators to build rewarding careers on the social network, based entirely on their talents. We're excited to support the team and their vision.”

High-definition teleconferencing has helped to bridge the distance for face-to-face business meetings, but the rise of virtual reality (VR) promises to do that, and so much more.

How about “attending” a virtual event with hundreds of others, playing a round of Dungeons & Dragons with a group of adventurers from around the world, or watching a movie or TV show with a loved one who happens to be on the other side of the planet?

Those are the kinds of social and shared virtual-reality experiences that Redwood City, Calif.-based startup AltspaceVR has in mind as it looks to expand the breadth and reach of a new platform that has already drawn interest from the cable industry.

AltspaceVR, like Facebook’s Oculus, Samsung, Microsoft and a growing batch of startups, are all placing bets that VR (as well augmented reality) is on the cusp of connecting with the consumer mainstream. While there’s still no telling the size of that market, ABI Research believes that 43 million VR units will be shipped by 2020.

VR: THE TIME HAS COME

The concept of virtual reality has been around for a long time, “essentially since computers existed,” AltspaceVR founder and CEO Eric Romo said.

So, why does it seem to be ready for takeoff now? One big key is the plummeting price of entry for higher-end VR devices that can pack in enough pixels to make it a true-to-life-experience, Romo said.

Products such as Facebook’s Oculus Rift are expected to fetch $300 to $400 — pricey, but not out of reach for many consumers. Technology that was capable of delivering a similar experience would’ve cost 100 times more as little as three years ago, Romo, a former rocket engineer at SpaceX and co-founder of solar technology firm GreenVolts, said.

On the lower end, Google Cardboard, a viewer literally made from cardboard that can be paired with a smartphone, can be had for as little as $5 from electronic retail outlets such as Amazon. Apps for it are flourishing.

“There is this kind of tailwind that largely came out of the mobile industry that’s allowed for VR to have this kind of emergence,” Romo said. “But price is important because that starts the conversation.”

The next part of that conversation involves what consumers can do with VR that’s entertaining, useful and compelling, and that’s where AltspaceVR is trying to enter the picture.

Its focus is the creation of socially driven, virtual worlds that put people together to play games, watch movies and TV shows and even enjoy live events “together,” even if they are thousands of miles apart. That experience includes head and hand gestures and other personal quirks that help to convey face-to-face communication.

“We think one of the underlying threads of a lot of the [VR] experience is going to be interaction,” Romo said. “It’s going to be about people feeling like they’re in the same place together. I think that’s the key emotion that we’re driving at with VR.”

STAYING POWER

AltspaceVR’s business is still in its early days. The company, founded in 2013, went into open beta about two months ago, following a series of closed beta trials. It claims to have users in more than 50 countries, with average user session times of about 25 minutes.

Romo thinks that’s important because VR has typically been demonstrated in much smaller, bite-sized demos that might run in the range of three to 10 minutes. Early indications are that consumers are willing to stay in these virtualized environments for much longer periods.

“Because everything has been a demo, nobody’s really answered the question whether someone might stay in [the VR environment] and listen for an hour or watch a 90-minute movie,” he said. A few weeks ago, AltspaceVR had a group of people play a table-top game for about three hours at a clip. “We’re one of the few companies that have shown that people are willing to do these things for a long period of time, if the content is compelling.”

To fuel its effort, AltspaceVR has created a software developers kit for its internal group and for third-party developers, which have already created about five apps powered by the company’s platform. Its system is already integrated to run on Oculus (for the full, immersive experience), or on browsers and certain 3D TVs, and works with input devices such as the mouse, Xbox 360 gamepad, keyboards and hand-and-body tracking systems such as Leap Motion and Microsoft’s Kinect v2. AltspaceVR is also looking to expand support to other VR platforms.

“We think being cross-platform is going to be very important for us,” Romo said.

AltspaceVR hopes its SDK and underlying platform — what Romo refers to as a “mashup of game-engine technology and Web-browsing technology” — will spark interest and spawn new apps and services.

“We’re smart enough to know that we’re not smart enough to know what everybody wants to do [with VR],” Romo said. “We don’t know what people will want to do in these shared, virtual spaces.”

Still, the company has already introduced several apps, including games such as Interstellar Defense (a VR homage to coin-op classic Space Invaders), an app called Hats (which lets your avatar don some bizarre headwear) and Solar System (a tour of the sun and planets).

The idea behind AltspaceVR has sparked interest from the pay TV industry. Comcast Ventures, the company’s V.C. arm, contributed to a $10.3 million found of financing in AltspaceVR, which has raised a total of $15.7 million.

Comcast hasn’t said how the startup’s platform might fit in, but Gavin Teo, principal at Comcast Ventures, offered this example in a blog post about the investment: “One of the most compelling features is the ability to watch streaming video from services like YouTube, Netflix and Twitch in VR … Imagine Game of Thrones streamed in a 2D web player in the shape of a TV screen hanging on the wall of a 3D space you are sharing with a friend on the other side of the world.”

CableLabs, the cable industry’s R&D house, has also been dabbling in VR to find out, for example, what the consumer appetite is for it. So far, the results show promise.

PROMISING DEMOS

The demos “were extremely popular,” Phil McKinney, CableLabs’s CEO, said. The consumer study spanned VR-powered drama, sporting events and music videos. Consumers, he said, were most interest in travel-related VR content.

AltspaceVR is currently working on getting its platform right, but it’s also starting to think about how it can turn its technology into a money-making business. The notion of VR-powered live events, to which users would pay an admission fee, is one of the ideas being pursued.

In the meantime, AltspaceVR has been hosting free events. Last Friday night (Aug. 21) for example, it organized a VR showing of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Also on the docket is the National Football League’s Oct. 25 Buffalo Bills-Jacksonville Jaguars game, billed as an “experimental stream of a regular season NFL game, exclusively from Yahoo.”

“There’s something about watching things together in larger groups that just makes it a more enjoyable experience,” Romo said.

As the Twitterverse and tech blogs understandably poked all kinds of fun atTime’s virtual reality cover with Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, Comcast this week was also talking up its financial interest in VR as the emerging market starts to seek a mainstream audience. 

Gavin Teo, principal at Comcast Ventures, noted in this blog post that the VC recently participated in a $10.3 million funding round for AltSpaceVR (announced by the startup in July), joining a big group of return investors that include Tencent, Dolby Family Ventures and Promus Ventures, among others.

AltSpaceVR, which has raised $15.7 million and was founded in 2013, says its virtual reality communication software is currently available for Oculus users (for the full, immersive experience), or on Mac and PC desktops, and 3D TVs. The platform also supports a trio of input devices (mouse, Xbox 360 gamepad, or keyboard), and hand-and-body tracking systems such as Leap Motion and the Microsoft Kinect v2.

It will use the new f unds to expand its team and accelerate product development.

The product, in this case, enables users to communicate and share experiences in a 3D VR environment. “We are the only place to watch synchronized Netflix in VR with other people,” AltSpace VR proclaims in this video that shows its platform in action. “We are one of the few places where you can do a ‘Rick Roll’ in VR with other people.” Yes, indeed. Sharing is caring.

“One of the most compelling features is the ability to watch streaming video from services like YouTube, Netflix and Twitch in VR,” Teo wrote. “Imagine Game of Thrones streamed in a 2D web player in the shape of a TV screen hanging on the wall of a 3D space you are sharing with a friend on the other side of the world.”

While the VR market is predicted to explode, the question, Teo said, is what consumers will do when they put on VR head-mounted displays from Oculus, Vive, Sony, Samsung or even Google Cardboard

 “Our view is that they will consume different kinds of media: games, animation, cinematic storytelling, live action sports - and they will want to do it with their friends,” he wrote. 

Comcast has hooked up with Nextdoor on an Xfinity Neighborhood Program that provides cable subs in Seattle access to a local “concierge” who’s available to answer questions about the MSO’s products, communicate service outages and provide offers and passes to special events.

According to GeekWire, Nextdoor, a private social networking platform tailored for individual neighborhoods, recently alerted community leaders in Seattle about the pilot program.

Founded in 2010, Nextdoor’s free platform enables individual neighborhoods to create private Websites to exchange contact info, offer advice and recommendations, and to organize virtual neighborhood watch groups. Comcast Ventures was one of a handful of companies that participated in a $60 million round of funding in Nexdoor announced last fall.

According to an FAQ about the pilot underway in Seattle, Comcast isn’t paying Nextdoor. “While XFINITY is offering this new program through Nextdoor, the two companies remain completely separate, and XFINITY will have no access to information about Nextdoor members," it reads. 

The FAQ also notes that Nextdoor can’t assist with Comcast service support or technical issues.

However, Shelli, the first “Xfinity ambassador” for the Seattle trial, notes in this Web post that she’ll be providing help with questions about Comcast services. Describing her role as “kind of like a neighborhood concierge,” she’s “not a salesperson, just your conveniently located link to a larger team that’s dedicated to providing customer service for you.”

Comcast is testing out the neighborhood concierge idea as the operator expands on efforts to improve its customer service and care. Of recent note, Comcast announced it would hire 5,500 customer service reps over the next three years as it showed off a prototype Studio Xfinity store in Chicago during the INTX show.

August, a maker of smart locks, has raised a $38 million Series B found led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Comcast Ventures and Qualcomm’s V.C. arm.

With the new round factored in, August has raised $50 million with the help of a slew of existing investors that include Maveron, Cowboy Ventures, Industry Ventures, Rho Ventures and SoftTech. Others that participated in the B round include CAA Ventures, Dolby Family Ventures, Global Brain, KDDI, SanDisk Ventures and Singtel Innov8.

August said it will use the fresh funds to launch new home access products, expand into retail markets and grow its team in San Francisco.

August, founded in 2012 by entrepreneur Jason Johnson and designer Yves Béhar, launched its flagship product, the August Smart Lock, in Apple stores nationwide last October. Its Bluetooth-based smart locks are designed to replace keys and enable its users to unlock and lock the device via the August apps for iOS and Android mobile devices.

August’s locks sell for $249.99 each and come in four colors – Dark Gray, August Red, Champaign, and Silver. August’s $49.99 Connect device, launched in February, is an accessory that works alongside its smart locks, providing it with a WiFi connection for remote access and integration with other smart devices, the company said.

As this video about the product shows, August smart lock users can grant access to others through an invitation system. That access can be granted to trusted individuals for a day, a week or even a month.

August is one of a slew of suppliers and vendors that's going after the growing Internet of Things market. For its part, Comcast has gotten into the game with Xfinity Home, a home automation/security product that runs on the Icontrol platform. 

“With this new financing, our team will define a new product category in the smart home, aiming to solve what we call the ‘last five foot problem.’” Johnson said, in a statement. There has always been talk of the ‘last mile problem’ of bringing trusted services into the home. With our smart lock, mobile apps, and cloud-based access control, we offer homeowners, property managers, and guests a sophisticated and trusted way to control home access, bridging the gap between service providers and homeowners.”

Tied in with the funding, Rob Stavis of Bessemer Venture Partners will join August’s board.

Comcast Ventures, Comcast’s VC arm, has expanded its Catalyst Fund to the west coast with the hire of Laurence “Lo” Toney, the former CEO of LearnStreet and GM at Zynga, the social gaming services company.

Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund focuses on investing in early stage startups  led by minority entrepreneurs.

“Minority-founded startups have traditionally received a disproportionately low percentage of angel and venture funding,” said Toney, in a statement. I’m eager to help change that by establishing a dedicated Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund presence in the Bay Area. We have an opportunity to help minority entrepreneurs grow and succeed by bringing them financial and strategic resources from our LP.”

“I am delighted to welcome Laurence ‘Lo’ Toney to Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund,” added Amy Banse, managing director and head of funds for Comcast Ventures. “With his background, expertise and network, Lo is the perfect person to lead Catalyst Fund West and help us identify exciting new companies to support and contribute to the growth of our portfolio.”

Toney, who is also late of Nike.com, Art.com and eBay, joins William Crowder, who leads the Catalyst Fund’s efforts from the east coast.

The Catalyst Fund, founded in 2011, manages a portfolio that currently includes nine companies: AptDeco, Maker’s Row, Cuyana, Mercaris, Loverly, Quad Learning, Reactor Inc., Versa and Virdis.

Taboola, the company behind a popular discovery platform for Web content and online videos, has locked up a $117 million “E” financing round led by Fidelity management and Research, with help from existing investors Marker LLC and Steadfast Capital, and a batch of new investors that includes Advanced Publications, Comcast Ventures, Yahoo! Japan and Groupe Arnault, among others.

Taboola said the new round extends its total capital raised to $157 million, noting that it’s been growing revenue, mobile usage and profitability since its inception in 2007, when it first focused on personalized video recommendation technologies.

Taboola, which acquired programmatic ad tech firm PerfectMarket last summer, has since shifted into editorial and sponsored content recommendations. The company said a “significant portion” of revenues now comes from mobile devices.

Taboola, which claims to serve more than 200 billion content recommendations to north of 550 million users across sites run by USA Today, Business Insider, Fox Sports and The Weather Channel, intends to use the new round to continue growth and expand into more international markets.

"We started Taboola with a mission to build a search engine in reverse -- instead of people looking for information, information now looks for us,” Adam Singolda, Taboola’s CEO, said in a statement. “As a company, we focus on culture, technology and tangible assets that our partners appreciate and can measure. This round will help us fuel growth, and launch next generation personalization technology to further connect consumers with information they may like and never knew existed."

Benu Networks, a startup focused on carrier WiFi and virtualized CPE technology, said Shaw Ventures as joined a group of strategic investors that contributed to a recently sweetened $27.7 million “B” round of funding.

Last October,  Benu, which is gearing up for its go-to-market phase, announced Liberty Global Ventures and Arris Group as strategic investors, and the hiring of Dino Di Palma as CEO. Those investors added to the $26.6 million round announced by Benu last September.  Spark Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures and Comcast Ventures also participated in the round. 

“This funding will allow Benu to continue to focus on bolstering its sales, marketing and engineering teams, and expand into the Latin America and Asia Pacific regions,” Di Palma said in a statement. “We are thrilled to be working with Shaw in our pursuit to deliver solutions to global carriers which will enable them to provide new and exciting cloud-based value-added services.”

Founded in 2010, Billerica, Mass.-based Benu counts execs from a wide range of cable and telecom vendors, including RiverDelta Networks (sold to Motorola in 2001), Cisco Systems, Arris, and Ciena. It has been developing a “virtual” service edge platform that places the management and brains of services into the cloud. By decoupling the control and data plane, the company believes, operators can gain unprecedented visibility into the set-tops, modems, tablets and other devices on their own access networks, as well as those run by others.

The first application from Benu is the Wireless Access Gateway,  which is already in use by a yet-unnamed major U.S. cable operator to manage and authenticate the national deployment of a “community” WiFi service that programs an additional, public-facing SSID (service set identifier) in millions of homebound DOCSIS-powered wireless gateways.

Axial, a New York-based company that helps link private companies to sources of capital, raised some of its own Tuesday, announcing a $11 million round of series financing led by Comcast Ventures and joined by existing investors Redpoint Ventures and First Round.

Select Axial members also joined the new round, including Thomas W. Courtney, Jr., President of The Courtney Group.

Axial improves the speed and efficiency with which private companies access capital by connecting them to a qualified network of investment professionals and financial intermediaries. Each week, over 200 private companies create profiles on Axial to explore, prepare for, and pursue financial transactions, including acquisitions, equity capital raises, and debt financings. Since the company's launch in 2010, 23,000 private companies, representing more than $400 billion in revenue, have brought their deals to market on Axial.

"We are excited about the shifts happening at the intersection of financial markets, technology, and media," said Comcast Ventures principal Sam Landman in a statement. "Axial's marketplace dramatically improves the way capital markets meet the needs of middle market businesses. We're thrilled to be investing in this company."