VC Buzz – $7.5+ million in today’s deals

PALO ALTO, Calif.–The EC Company, which offers a hosted Internet transaction exchange that provides a business to business e-commerce solution for mid-market suppliers, announced that it completed a $6.5 million financing, its first since its reorganization in late 1998. In addition to Talkot Capital and Wasserstein Adelson Ventures, investors in the round included White Rock Capital and Invemed Associates.

SAN FRANCISCO–IONA Technologies, a provider of technology and solutions for support of enterprise distributed applications, announced that it has received an investment from the Intel 64 Fund. Financial details were not disclosed. The Intel 64 Fund investment in IONA was made in support of IONA’s commitment to develop an optimized version of its IONA iPortal Suite product family for Intel’s upcoming IA64 product family, beginning with the Itanium processor.

The Intel 64 Fund is a quarter billion dollar equity fund that invests in emerging technologies for next-generation servers and workstations utilizing Intel’s IA-64 architecture. The Fund is coordinated by Intel with Compaq, Dell, HP, Intel, NEC, and SGI as co-investors.

TOKYO/NEW YORK– Wit Capital Japan Inc. announced that it closed on its second round of financing. The company raised $30.3 million (JPY 3.2 billion) from a group of first-class financial and technology companies to help fund its entry into investment banking for Internet companies and electronic brokerage services for individuals in Japan. Wit Capital Japan has raised $40.2 million (JPY 4.24 billion) in total since August.

NEW YORK — Versaware Inc., a leader in Internet and electronic publishing, announced that the following companies have been engaged to raise private equity financing: Nomura International plc will handle placements for Europe and Josephthal and Company for the United States.

InfoCast also announced that it has completed a US$13 million private placement financing executed through C&M Capital of Helsinki, Finland in partnership with Lornic Ltd. based in Geneva, Switzerland. The company saidthat the offering was fully subscribed.

MINNEAPOLIS–Norstan Inc. — a technology services leader providing information technology, multiservice networking and communications solutions — announced it has entered into an agreement with SpeechWorks International, Inc. — a leading provider of conversational speech recognition technology and products for e-business solutions — to market and sell the company’s automated speech recognition software to customers worldwide. SpeechWorks products, now incorporated into solutions offered by Norstan’s Call Center Solutions Group, include SpeechSite, the first speech recognition system to bring the Web model of self-service to the telephone, and the award-winning SpeechWorks 5.0, a comprehensive multi-language solution that includes core recognition technology and tools.

SpeechWorks is a privately held corporation with financing from venture capital firms, Intel Corporation and SAP.

HARTFORD, Conn. — DirectAdvice.com Inc., a provider of Internet-based comprehensive financial planning and advice services, announced the appointments of Neil W. Benedict as senior vice president of sales and marketing, and Michael Leiter as vice president and chief financial officer.

The company’s funding comes from leading Internet investors and strategic partners Softbank, Siegel & Gale, J.C. Bradford and Incam of Dusseldorf, Germany.

ALBANY, Calif.–Utility.com, the first Internet utility company, recently appointed Timothy E. Morris as chief financial officer, announced Chris King, co-founder, director and chief executive officer of Utility.com. In this position, Morris is responsible for achieving the company’s financial objectives, including venture financing and any possible initial public offering.

Utility.com is a privately-held company founded in 1998 by idealab!.

Do you think YOUR cool company ought to be featured in a VC Watch column?

Then go here …

… and tell us all about yourself.