American River Ventures

American River Ventures is a venture capital and private equity firm based in Sacramento, California, founded in 2001. The firm specializes in seed and early-stage investments, as well as growth capital. It focuses on providing bridge financing to new technology companies, particularly in sectors such as energy efficiency, energy intelligence, advanced materials, semiconductors, communications, wireless technologies, displays, data storage, and software. American River Ventures primarily targets investments within the Western United States, typically committing a minimum of $0.50 million to its portfolio companies.

John Kunhart

Managing Director and Co-Founder

Harry Laswell

MD, Managing Partner and Co-Founder

31 past transactions

SynapSense

Venture Round in 2010
SynapSense provides complete wireless instrumentation solutions that offer energy efficiency and carbon footprint reduction for the world's leading data centers and enterprises.

WiSpry

Series C in 2009
WiSpry, Inc. is a fabless radio frequency semiconductor company based in Irvine, California, founded in 2002. The company specializes in developing, manufacturing, and marketing radio frequency silicon integrated circuits and components, particularly tunable RF technology. Its product offerings include digital RF capacitors, RF capacitor networks, digital RF-MEMS tunable capacitors, filters, duplexors, and power amplifiers. These products support various applications such as RF matching circuits, agile frequency generation, and tunable filter systems. WiSpry serves a diverse clientele, including mobile handset manufacturers, RF module producers, cellular base station suppliers, and electronic system developers. As of May 2015, WiSpry operates as a subsidiary of AAC Technologies Holdings Inc.

SynapSense

Series C in 2009
SynapSense provides complete wireless instrumentation solutions that offer energy efficiency and carbon footprint reduction for the world's leading data centers and enterprises.

Lumetric Lighting

Series A in 2008
Lumetric Lighting, Inc. provides lighting and controls systems. The company offers HID light sources, induction light sources, energy savings lighting sources, and plug-n-play motion sensors. Its products are used for lighting large areas, such as warehouses, retail spaces, manufacturing facilities, railway stations, airports, supermarkets, and stadiums. The company was formerly known as HID Laboratories, Inc. Lumetric Lighting, Inc. was founded in 2007 and is based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

WiSpry

Series B in 2008
WiSpry, Inc. is a fabless radio frequency semiconductor company based in Irvine, California, founded in 2002. The company specializes in developing, manufacturing, and marketing radio frequency silicon integrated circuits and components, particularly tunable RF technology. Its product offerings include digital RF capacitors, RF capacitor networks, digital RF-MEMS tunable capacitors, filters, duplexors, and power amplifiers. These products support various applications such as RF matching circuits, agile frequency generation, and tunable filter systems. WiSpry serves a diverse clientele, including mobile handset manufacturers, RF module producers, cellular base station suppliers, and electronic system developers. As of May 2015, WiSpry operates as a subsidiary of AAC Technologies Holdings Inc.

SynapSense

Series B in 2007
SynapSense provides complete wireless instrumentation solutions that offer energy efficiency and carbon footprint reduction for the world's leading data centers and enterprises.

SpectraSensors

Series C in 2007
SpectraSensors, Inc. manufactures and supplies precision optical laser-based gas analyzers for the energy and petrochemical industries. Its products include air monitoring, moisture, dew point, hydrogen sulfide, H2S, dual channel, and atmospheric and portable gas analyzers for natural gas pipelines and processors, petrochemical refineries, and chemical companies. The company's solutions measure and monitor gas and petrochemical concentrations in a variety of applications, such as environmental, energy, water, and chemical process monitoring. Its gas analyzers measure moisture, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride, methane, ammonia, and ethylene oxide. The company also provides communication software systems, such as SCADA2000 for data acquisition, control, and monitoring of custody transfer metering; and CMC, a communications management center for automated and on-demand polling of field monitoring devices. SpectraSensors offers its products through an international distribution network and installation base in North America, Europe, the Pacific Rim, Australia, and Asia. The company was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas with engineering, design, and manufacturing operations in Rancho Cucamonga, California. SpectraSensors was acquired in 2012 by Swiss company Endress+Hauser, a global leader in measurement instrumentation, services and solutions for industrial process engineering.

Xponent

Series C in 2007
Xponent Photonics, Inc. manufactures surface mount photonic components for optical assemblies. It offers triplexers and diplexers for single-fiber applications, including PON, point-to-point, and bidirectional radio frequency (RF) systems. Xponent Photonics serves optical systems vendors, transceiver suppliers, and optical subsystem suppliers. The company was formerly known as cQuint Communications Corporation and changed its name to Xponent Photonics, Inc. in March 2002.

WiSpry

Series B in 2006
WiSpry, Inc. is a fabless radio frequency semiconductor company based in Irvine, California, founded in 2002. The company specializes in developing, manufacturing, and marketing radio frequency silicon integrated circuits and components, particularly tunable RF technology. Its product offerings include digital RF capacitors, RF capacitor networks, digital RF-MEMS tunable capacitors, filters, duplexors, and power amplifiers. These products support various applications such as RF matching circuits, agile frequency generation, and tunable filter systems. WiSpry serves a diverse clientele, including mobile handset manufacturers, RF module producers, cellular base station suppliers, and electronic system developers. As of May 2015, WiSpry operates as a subsidiary of AAC Technologies Holdings Inc.

KeyEye Communications

Venture Round in 2006
KeyEye Communications, Inc. went out of business. KeyEye Communications, Inc., a fabless semiconductor company, provides connectivity solutions on structured copper twisted pair cables. It offers 10Gbps Ethernet transceivers that deliver 10GBASE-T connectivity over data center cable reaches. The company was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Sacramento, California. KeyEye Communications, Inc. has product design centers in San Jose, California; and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

KeyEye Communications

Series B in 2006
KeyEye Communications, Inc. went out of business. KeyEye Communications, Inc., a fabless semiconductor company, provides connectivity solutions on structured copper twisted pair cables. It offers 10Gbps Ethernet transceivers that deliver 10GBASE-T connectivity over data center cable reaches. The company was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Sacramento, California. KeyEye Communications, Inc. has product design centers in San Jose, California; and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Incuity Software

Series A in 2006
Incuity Software, Inc. is a privately-held Delaware corporation founded in 2004 in Mission Viejo, California. Although new as a corporation, the founders and staff of Incuity Software, formerly known as DataWorks Systems, have a long history in the design, development and marketing of industrial automation database and data analysis software products.

SynapSense

Series A in 2006
SynapSense provides complete wireless instrumentation solutions that offer energy efficiency and carbon footprint reduction for the world's leading data centers and enterprises.

Integrated Materials

Series C in 2005
Integrated Materials, Inc., a silicon science and technology company, manufactures poly silicon furnaceware products for integrated circuit manufacturers. It offers boats, injectors, liners, pedestals, ring boats, and shelf boats. The company‘s products are used in high temperature processes, LPCVD processes, and thermal operations. Integrated Materials, Inc. was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. As of July 12, 2010, Integrated Materials, Inc. operates as a subsidiary of Ferrotec (USA) Corporation.

Agoura Technologies

Series A in 2005
Agoura Technologies, Inc., a nanotechnology company, develops optical films.

OpenClovis

Series B in 2005
OpenClovis Solutions, Inc. develops and deploys commercial off-the-shelf software infrastructure platform for Tier 1 carrier and enterprise networks worldwide. It provides SAFplus High Availability and Scalability Platform that allows to add the management and service layer to design; Integrated Development Environment that simplifies and accelerates the development of networking and computing equipment; and Test Automation Environment Tool that provides lifecycle testing requirements in a distributed networking. The company also offers Runtime Director, a web-based cluster management solution integrated with SAFplus that allows SAF AMF entities in the cluster to be viewed and modified using an intuitive graphical interface. It serves networking, telecommunications, aerospace/defense, compute platforms, Internet of Things, high frequency gaming, and MMO gaming markets. OpenClovis Solutions, Inc. was formerly known as Clovis Solutions, Inc. and changed its name to OpenClovis Solutions, Inc. in May 2006. The company was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Petaluma, California. It has research and development centers in Bengaluru, India; and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

SpectraSensors

Series B in 2005
SpectraSensors, Inc. manufactures and supplies precision optical laser-based gas analyzers for the energy and petrochemical industries. Its products include air monitoring, moisture, dew point, hydrogen sulfide, H2S, dual channel, and atmospheric and portable gas analyzers for natural gas pipelines and processors, petrochemical refineries, and chemical companies. The company's solutions measure and monitor gas and petrochemical concentrations in a variety of applications, such as environmental, energy, water, and chemical process monitoring. Its gas analyzers measure moisture, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride, methane, ammonia, and ethylene oxide. The company also provides communication software systems, such as SCADA2000 for data acquisition, control, and monitoring of custody transfer metering; and CMC, a communications management center for automated and on-demand polling of field monitoring devices. SpectraSensors offers its products through an international distribution network and installation base in North America, Europe, the Pacific Rim, Australia, and Asia. The company was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas with engineering, design, and manufacturing operations in Rancho Cucamonga, California. SpectraSensors was acquired in 2012 by Swiss company Endress+Hauser, a global leader in measurement instrumentation, services and solutions for industrial process engineering.

WiSpry

Series A in 2005
WiSpry, Inc. is a fabless radio frequency semiconductor company based in Irvine, California, founded in 2002. The company specializes in developing, manufacturing, and marketing radio frequency silicon integrated circuits and components, particularly tunable RF technology. Its product offerings include digital RF capacitors, RF capacitor networks, digital RF-MEMS tunable capacitors, filters, duplexors, and power amplifiers. These products support various applications such as RF matching circuits, agile frequency generation, and tunable filter systems. WiSpry serves a diverse clientele, including mobile handset manufacturers, RF module producers, cellular base station suppliers, and electronic system developers. As of May 2015, WiSpry operates as a subsidiary of AAC Technologies Holdings Inc.

PocketThis

Series C in 2004
PocketThis was founded in 1999 and has more than 35 employees. They're based in the Silicon Valley in northern California and have European offices in London, Paris and Sweden. PocketThis delivers packaged software that allows mobile operators to rapidly partner with content and service providers, create new and useful services, and generate increased mobile data services revenue.

Clairvoyante, Inc.

Series B in 2004
Clairvoyante develops PenTile RGBW technology to optimize screen brightness, resolution, and power consumption of flat-panel liquid crystal displays that enables high-brightness and low-power displays that needs to support data-centric 3G applications and contents. Clairvoyante is a U.S.-based company that was founded in 2000 by Candice Brown Elliott. The company was acquired by Samsung Electronics on March, 2008.

ReShape

Series C in 2004
ReShape provides EDA (Electronic Design Automation) software products and related services for the high end ASIC market. The company was founded in 1998 and it is located in the United States.

KeyEye Communications

Series B in 2004
KeyEye Communications, Inc. went out of business. KeyEye Communications, Inc., a fabless semiconductor company, provides connectivity solutions on structured copper twisted pair cables. It offers 10Gbps Ethernet transceivers that deliver 10GBASE-T connectivity over data center cable reaches. The company was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Sacramento, California. KeyEye Communications, Inc. has product design centers in San Jose, California; and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Senforce Technologies

Venture Round in 2004
Senforce technology provides protection by enforcing encryption policies at employees' computers, whether they are online or offline. The software includes "location-aware enforcement" that prevents unauthorized access to a network by automatically adjusting security controls and protections based on the user's location.

Triformix

Series A in 2003
Triformix

KeyEye Communications

Series A in 2003
KeyEye Communications, Inc. went out of business. KeyEye Communications, Inc., a fabless semiconductor company, provides connectivity solutions on structured copper twisted pair cables. It offers 10Gbps Ethernet transceivers that deliver 10GBASE-T connectivity over data center cable reaches. The company was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Sacramento, California. KeyEye Communications, Inc. has product design centers in San Jose, California; and Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Finatus

Series B in 2002
Finatus provides online services that enables small- and medium-sized businesses to comply with environmental health and safety regulations. The company’s suite of services combines regulatory data, directions, and online wizard tools to help a manager through the entire compliance and reporting process. Finatus was founded in 2000 and is based in Portland, Oregon.

ReShape

Series B in 2002
ReShape provides EDA (Electronic Design Automation) software products and related services for the high end ASIC market. The company was founded in 1998 and it is located in the United States.

Finatus

Series A in 2001
Finatus provides online services that enables small- and medium-sized businesses to comply with environmental health and safety regulations. The company’s suite of services combines regulatory data, directions, and online wizard tools to help a manager through the entire compliance and reporting process. Finatus was founded in 2000 and is based in Portland, Oregon.