
A $20 million fund, Softline Venture Partners is the venture unit of Softline, a Russian software licensing market company. The fund typically invests in the range of $100,000-$1 million.
Biotechnology company Ziarco has closed the first round of its series A round with $6m.
Specialty pharmaceutical company Aclaris Therapeutics raises $21m in a Series A round led by Vivo Ventures.
Alongside Google Ventures in the A round were venture capital firms InterWest Partners, Accel Partners and 500 Startups and angel investors.
Software company Decisyon has closed its series A round at $15m led by investment firm Axel Johnson.
Novo Ventures and Novartis Venture Funds, which invest on behalf of Denmark-based Novo and Switzerland-based Novartis respectively, co-led the A round.
Sonia Sahney Nagar, formerly a senior product manager at online retailer Amazon, is chief executive of Pickie and a co-founder alongside Abhijit Rao and Ryan Weber.
Amit Narayan, director of Stanford's Smart Grid program and a visiting professor at the university, and Shiva Swaminathan, a senior resource planner at City of Palo Alto Utilities, formed AutoGrid last year.