Two Open Source Venture Capital Rounds From This Week

This week brought more venture capital funding for open source players. Google's Chrome OS isn't the only news on the netbook operating system front for the week. Jolicloud, which has an Internet operating system for netbooks, has announced the completion of a $4.2M Series A funding round led by Atomico Ventures, in conjunction with Mangrove Capital Partners. Meanwhile, Borqs, which has an open mobile phone operating system based on Android, has raised $17.4 million in Series B funding.

Jolicloud is founded by Tariq Krim, the founder of Netvibes, one of Europe's successful Web startups. In conjunction with its funding, Niklas Zennström, co-founder of Atomico Ventures, Skype, Joost, Kazaa and Joltid, will take a seat on the board. Michael Jackson, partner at Mangrove Capital Partners and former COO of Skype, will participate as an advisor. Entrepreneur Gilles Samoun, CEO of fotonauts and founder of Qualys will also join the board. Jolicloud is only in alpha with its netbook operating system at this point, but intends to deliver a beta later this year.

Borqs is a Beijing-based company, which the Silicon Valley Business Journal says has operations in Sunnyvale, California--not far from Google's headquarters. It makes mobile software products for wireless service providers, already has deals with China Mobile, and is pursuing an Android-based, customized operating system for mobile phones. You can find out more about the two-year old startup and its efforts here.

Netbooks and smartphones have remained hot product categories, despite the down economy. In all likelihood, we'll see more funding for open source efforts in these areas, and even continuing convergence between the two mobile categories.