Eye-Fi raises $5.5M for digital camera WiFi
Mountain View, Calif.-based Eye-Fi, a company building digital camera memory cards with built-in wireless and a service that allows users to automatically upload their photos to a PC or the Internet, today closed a $5.5 first round of funding from Opus Capital and Shasta Ventures.
Eye-Fi, which has yet to launch; it will do so this fall.
Companies such as SanDisk market similar Wi-Fi memory but the technology has not been widely adopted in digital photography. Canon, Kodak, Nikon and other manufacturers also sell digital cameras with built-in wireless. Eye-Fi’s solution allows users of older and cheaper digital cameras to use wireless without upgrading to a new camera.
Eye-Fi is seeking to build partnerships with online photo sites and retailers to allow users to share and print their photos. (CEO Yuval Koren hinted at a partnership with everyone’s favorite social networking site these days—but no name drops.)
Accompanying the funding is Carl Showalter from Opus Capital and Robert Coneybeer from Shasta Ventures, both of whom will be joining the company’s board of directors. Eye-Fi was founded in 2005.
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