Jawbone, a San Francisco-based company that makes mobile lifestyle accessories such as Jambox and Up, a personal health device, has raised another $ 40 million in new funds from Deutsche Telekom, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, private investor Yuri Milner (and not his investment vehicle, DST), and investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management were amongst the earlier investors in the company. With this new slug of funding, the company raised a total of $ 160 million in new funds during 2011 bringing the total amount raised by the company to a whopping $ 210 million. The company is valued at north of $ 1.5 billion, according to a report published in The Wall Street Journal earlier this year.
The new funding comes shortly after the company faced a backlash and an uproar over its Up health device. The company decided to reimburse unhappy customers all their money and allowed them to keep the devices as well.
As part of the deal, Deutsche Telecom is going to distribute Jawbone’s mobile lifestyle products through its channel, especially in Europe. Hosain Rahman, chief executive of Jawbone (which till recently was known as Aliph) told us the company was seeing a huge surge in demand for its Jambox wireless speaker product and, at present, it is the number one selling portable speaker system in the US both by revenues and unit sales.
Jawbone started out making headsets for mobile phones and later expanded into new markets such as audio and latterly healthcare devices. The company has changed its focus to making connected personal & lifestyle devices. Rahman says the company is going to launch a series of new products both addressing the healthcare and audio market segments.
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