Clean Filtration Technologies, maker of a self-cleaning, maintenance-free metal membrane used to process waste water and produce clean, healthy drinking water in high volumes, has brought in $3.55 million of a targeted $7.2 million round of equity and securities, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Saratoga, Calif., the company has not disclosed any investors. Its membrane, branded as the CFT Turboclone, is supposedly cheaper to make and install, lowering the overall cost of filtration systems that have been proven to last longer without regular maintenance than older filtration systems, [...]

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InSite Medical Technologies, maker of a medical device used to safely deliver epidural anesthesia during childbirth and other procedures, has just brought in $1.06 million of an expected $2.08 million round of equity, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Saratoga, Calif., the company has no information on its web site, but a Stanford newsletter reports that it also received a $100,000 award from the National Science Foundation.

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The Foundry has just brought in $3 million in equity to finance a stealthy new company known only as Foundry Newco XII for now, according to a filing with the SEC. The Menlo Park, Calif.-based incubator focuses almost exclusively on medical and biotech ventures, so it’s not a stretch to assume this new entity falls into that category. It is also backed by Morgenthaler Ventures, Split Rock Partners and Domain Associates.

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BuyWithMe uses social networking to aggregate large groups of buyers to make purchases in bulk — thereby lowering prices at major retailers. It has just raised $5.5 million in first-round capital to scale its user base and forge more vendor partnerships. The service also sends out email alerts to users calling their attention to sales and other deals in their local areas (right now it only operates in Boston, Washington, D.C., and San Diego). Based in Boston, the company received the recent financing from Matrix Partners. It was previously backed by family and friends.

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CrowdFlower, the startup that helps companies find and manage workers for menial tasks, just announced that it has raised $5 million in a first round of institutional funding. San Francisco-based CrowdFlower (whose chief executive, Lukas Biewald, is a friend of mine from college) is useful when you need basic tasks performed that can’t be automated by technology, such as tagging photos or categorizing the sentiments expressed in different messages on Twitter. There are a number of services that already provide the infrastructure for this type of crowdsourcing, most notably Amazon’s [...]

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In Silicon Valley, even the teenagers are wheeling and dealing. Teens in Tech, the startup that helps teens publish online, has acquired microblogging startup Yazzem. The average age of the founders involved in this deal is probably around, uh, half my own age. Redwood City, Calif.-based Teens in Tech was founded by Daniel Brusilovsky (pictured above), now 17. Yazzem, meanwhile, was founded last year by 14-year-olds Zachary Collins and Dustin Snider. The deal will expand the communication tools already offered by Teens in Tech, such as a free blog and media sharing — Brusilovsky, who also [...]

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Website testing company Sauce Labs just announced that it has raised $3.1 million in a first round of funding. The San Francisco startup is trying to build a business around Selenium, the open source testing tool developed by company co-founder Jason Huggins. Selenium has been downloaded around 2.6 million times, and has been used for testing at companies including Google, Yahoo, eBay, and Salesforce.com, Sauce Labs says. (In fact, Huggins worked at Google for a while to oversee the search giant’s Selenium testing.) Basically, it allows companies to write a script for walking through all the [...]

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It looks like voice communications company Voxeo wants to expand its platform by buying up technology — the company says it has made eight acquisitions in the last two years. Tonight, it’s announcing the purchase of ClackUp, a web conferencing startup. Voxeo offers what it calls “unlocked communications,” allowing businesses to use voice-over-Internet-protocol technology to automate customer and employee phone calls, text messages, and more. The Orland, Fla. company is now adding ClackPoint technology to its platform, with ClackPoint-enabled services appearing over the [...]

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Pulmonx, maker of medical devices used to treat emphysema and other chronic respiratory disorders, has raised $11.5 million in options, warrants and debt financing, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in Redwood City, Calif., the company is backed by De Novo Ventures, Latterell Venture Partners, MedVenture Associates and Montreux Equity Partners. It previously raised $20 million in May 2007 and a $3 million bridge round in August 2008.

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Trident Capital, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based firm known for backing travel planner site Kayak, thin-film solar maker Xunlight, and wireless provider AirTight Networks, has filed with the SEC to raise a $400 million venture capital fund, its seventh. Trident has a very diverse portfolio, including startups in cleantech, enterprise software, health care software, consumer internet services, payment systems and wireless providers. The firm was a bigger deal during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, winning big with investments in MapQuest, iRobot (maker of the Roomba vacuum cleaner which went public [...]

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