Nexant Inc. has shrugged off any suggestion of a continuing venture capital slump with a recent $50 million round of funding.

San Francisco-based Nexant is a provider of intelligent grid software and clean energy services. Arjun Gupta is executive chairman of the company.

Investors include Romesh Wadhwani of Symphony Tech­nology Group, TeleSoft Partners, Oak Investment Partners, Intel Capital and Beacon.

Wadhwani is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Symphony Technology Group, a private equity firm investing in software and software services companies.

“We are delighted to welcome Romesh to Nexant,” said Gupta. “We are privileged to have Romesh’s participation — particularly his extensive experience building software companies — as we scale Nexant’s next-generation platform and applications, such as GridSmart, Trak­Smart, and Chem­Systems.”

“My chief mission has always been to help build great companies over the long term by investing in transformative technology and exceptional talent capable of delivering breakthrough client value,” said Wadhwani. “I believe Nexant has the potential to be one of those great companies and I am excited to be working with Nexant's team of energy and software experts to accelerate growth and help scale the company.”

Nexan’s software focuses on the demands of electricity grid operations and energy markets — managing energy efficiency, demand response, and distributed generation; improving the efficiency of the power grid; and supporting market operations. In addition, Nexant provides a wide range of technical, operational, and strategic consulting services to utilities, and oil, gas and chemical companies.

Operating from 27 offices in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, Nexant’s software operates in over 120 control centers at utilities worldwide. Its clients include utilities, transmission and distribution system operators, chemical and petroleum companies, financial institutions and government agencies.

In other venture capital news:

• Appnomic Systems has closed a $2.5 million second round of funding led by Norwest Venture Partners. Over the past several months, Appnomic has acquired key clients in the U.S., India, Middle East and Africa for its automation-based infrastructure management services. Appnomic will use this most recent infusion of funds to further enhance its sales presence in the U.S., launch operations in Europe and improve its products. Paddy Padmanabhan is CEO of Appnomic, which has its worldwide operations in Palo Alto, Calif. The company’s total financing to date is $6.5 million.
  
• TxVia Inc., a developer of processing technology for prepaid and emerging payments, has raised $27.5 million led by new investor Oak Investment Partners. Existing institutional investors, including Bain Capital Ventures, Espírito Santo Ventures and Village Ventures, also participated. The latest funding provides TxVia with expanded resources to respond to strong ongoing global demand for its processing services, according to the company. Anil D. Aggarwal is chairman and CEO of TxVia, which is headquartered in New York.
  
• Verastem, a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing drugs to treat cancer by targeting cancer stem cells, has raised $16 million in a first round of financing. Founding investor, Longwood Founders Fund, was joined by Bessemer Venture Partners, Cardinal Partners, and MPM Capital. The company was formed around the research focusing on identifying compounds with the potential to selectively kill cancer stem cells. The company was co-founded by scientific advisors Piyush Gupta (Whitehead Institute), Eric Lander (Broad Institute), and Robert Weinberg (Whitehead Institute); Satish Jindal; and Rich Aldrich, Michelle Dipp and Christoph Westphal (Longwood Founders Fund).
  
• Verismo Networks, an Internet TV platform, has raised $17 million in fudning. Intel Capital led the round with participation from Verismo’s existing seed investors. Verismo will use these funds to accelerate its growth and expand operations. Verismo’s open Internet TV platform is offers convergence of IPTV linear channels, Internet video, social networking and personal media playback directly to the TV. Prakash Bhalerao is president and CEO of the Mountain View, Calif.-based company.
  
• Virident Systems Inc., a business data storage company, has raised a second round of venture capital funding. The funding was led by Sequoia Capital and Globespan Capital Partners. It included participation from existing investors such as Artiman Ventures. The funding will be used to accelerate Virident’s solid-state storage products and scale to address this rapidly growing market demand, the company said. The company is headquartered in Milpitas, Calif. Kumar Ganapathy serves as CEO.