LinkedIn, Social networking website, named former Yahoo manager Jeff Weiner as its chief executive officer and a member of board, replacing co-founder, chairman and CEO Reid Hoffman.

In an attempt to expand its horizon, seed-stage venture firm Y Combinator - which till now has been exclusively financed by founders Paul Graham, Robert Morris, Jessica Livingston and Trevor Blackwell - has recently raised nearly $2 million from Sequoia Capital and a few angel investors.

According to reports, the VoIP - voice over internet protocol - communication service Jajah has received $2.75 million in its fourth funding round. Though there has been no official disclosure about the investors, Jajah - which has earlier raised $23 million - has been supported in the past by Globespan Capital Partners, Deutsche Telekom, Intel Capital, and Sequoia Capital.

Forbes' latest list of the world's billionaires has quite a few surprising drop-offs from among the unbelievably wealthy individuals! With recession taking an indirect toll on the richest of the rich, the most prominent names that no longer figure on the billionaire list are - Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook; Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital; and Arthur Rock, the venture capital pioneer.

Two of the venture business bigwigs - Sequoia Capital and Benchmark Capital - have backed a startup called Cotendo, helping it raise a $7 million second funding round for its content delivery network. The San Carlos, California-based company, with a large part of its R&D team in Israel, had earlier raised a first round of unrevealed amount from Sequoia.

In a part-cash and part-equity transaction of an undisclosed amount, the Sweden-based site Stardoll - a girl teen-site backed by Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures - is taking over Piczo, the San Francisco, California-based social networking site focusing on adolescent users.

An additional funding of $7 million has come in for SynapSense, markedly from Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH - the venture division of the European bigwig, Robert Bosch - which has become a part of the current investors, including Sequoia Capital, Emerald Technology Ventures, American River Ventures, Nth Power and DFJ Frontier, backing the company.

In its second round of funding, Kenshoo, the Israeli startup that automates the end-to-end process of building and running SEM - search-engine marketing - campaign, received cash infusion from Sequoia Capital and Arts Alliance, its current investor.

Impressed by high-profile venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, the Silicon Valley venture capital icon Pierre Lamond has decided to join Khosla Ventures. Lamond, 78, associated with the early chip company National Semiconductor, intended retiring from Sequoia, but after conversing with Khosla - involved in financing bold, scientific companies - Lamond changed his mind.

In its third round of funding, the startup Appirio, which puts together various online business applications and platforms, has raised $10 million. The funding round, marking a $16.7 million total raising, was led by GGV Capital - with an $8.2 million investment - and included earlier investor Sequoia Capital, with a $1.8 million contribution.