Lightningcast Secures $15.5 Million in Funding

Lightningcast (www.lightningcast.com), a company that inserts targeted audio and video ads into streaming media, has announced its second round of funding from Nokia Venture Partners, Redleaf Group Inc., and Birchmere Ventures. Both Redlead and Birchmere are return investors from Lightingcast's initial round of financing, but the company hopes that the addition of Nokia Venture Partners will help to better align them within the wireless streaming industry.

The second round of funding totals $15.5 million, which brings the total amount of funding the company has received to date, to $20.2 million.

Jeff Bartlam, Lightningcast's CFO stated, "The value of our relationship with Nokia Venture Partners goes far beyond their investment dollars. Nokia Venture Partners has the industry contacts, the market expertise and portfolio company relationships to assist Lightningcast in its goal to be the standard for streaming media ad insertion technology."

Nokia, one of the world's largest manufacturers of wireless handsets, predicts that there will be more Web-connected mobile handsets than PCs in the world as early as 2002. Nokia Venture Partners, backed by Nokia, Goldman Sachs, CDBWebTech, BMC Software and others, states that its goal is to lead in mobile Internet investments.

"Securing investments from Nokia, Redleaf and Birchmere validates our business model," said Tom Des Jardins, CEO of Lightningcast.

In other funding related news, www.BabyPressConference.com, an online hospital maternity service that allows parents to introduce their newborns to loved ones via streaming video, announced the closing of its Series E equity raise of $4.9 million.

Investors include Toys-R-Us and Primedia Inc. BabyPressConference.com states that it will use the Series E funding for continuing expansion, marketing, content and technology purposes.