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Tesla has finalized an $82.5 million series F funding round, according to a spokeswoman for the company. Tesla raised $82.5 million in funding from Daimler, Fjord Capital Partners, Aabar and other undisclosed investors. We have been informed that Tesla CEO and PayPal founder Elon Musk was not an investor in this round. This adds to the $50 million Tesla received from Daimler in May, bringing the total amount invested in the electric car company to $783.5 million.

Telsa says the new funding will be used to accelerate Tesla’s retail expansion of the Model S. Tesla has already opened regional sales and service facilities in London, Munich, New York, Seattle and in California’s Silicon Valley and Los Angeles. It plans to open stores later this year in Monaco, Washington DC, South Florida and Toronto.

We hear that Tesla’s valuation increased from May but the company is not disclosing the amount. Tesla has been on a roll recently. They announced profitability, secured $465 million in government loans to build their next car plant and raised another $50 million in equity from Daimler that valued the company at $550 million.

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Silicon Valley electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors got another shot in the arm today from German auto giant Daimler, which took a 10 percent stake in the company and expanded its partnership with Tesla to equip future Mercedes-Benz vehicles with electric lithium-ion batteries. Mercedes has been testing Tesla’s batteries in a fleet of 100 smart cars, and is already moving into limited production. But with this agreement, Mercedes now expects to roll out its first battery-powered Mercedes-Benz in 2010, and offer battery-powered vehicles for all of its models by 2012

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Daimler takes a 10 percent stake in Tesla Motors

Transformers! There is more than meets the eye. Flash drives in disguise. Transformers

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The transforming Ravage flash drive has more than meets the eye

Silicon Valley electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors got another shot in the arm today from German auto giant Daimler, which took a 10 percent stake in the company and expanded its partnership with Tesla to equip future Mercedes-Benz vehicles with electric lithium-ion batteries. Mercedes has been testing Tesla’s batteries in a fleet of 100 smart cars, and is already moving into limited production. But with this agreement, Mercedes now expects to roll out its first battery-powered Mercedes-Benz in 2010, and offer battery-powered vehicles for all of its models by 2012.

The amount invested was not disclosed, but even more valuable to Tesla is the vote of confidence from one of the world’s leading auto companies. In a press release, Daimler proclaims: “Tesla is the only production automaker selling a highway capable electric vehicle in North America and Europe.”

The money will no doubt help as well, since Tesla still needs a few hundred million dollars to produce its own $50,000 Model S, which is half the price of its first car, the Tesla Roadster. The company is still applying for $350 million in government loans to get the Model S into production, but it looks like Mercedes will have at least its B-class cars on the road first.

But as I suggested a year ago, Tesla’s real business may be in supplying the electric drive trains for other vehicles. The Roadster and Model S might just turn out to be really expensive demos. In a TechCrunch poll I inserted into that post (and again below), 77 percent of you agreed. I wonder if Mercedes has an exclusive license to Tesla’s battery technology, at least for a few years.

What will be a bigger business for Tesla in five years?
( polls)

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Glue (formerly known as BlueOrganizer), now boasts its own API. Glue is a contextual social networking layer powered by a Firefox browser add-on which startup AdaptiveBlue added to its semantic browsing technology platform late last year.

This provides third-party developers with a way to connect to and tap into the databases and semantic recognition engine the company has been building over the past few months.

Glue essentially leverages information that already exists inside Web pages, and enables users to interact with things like books, music and movies from a toolbar layered on top of the pages in a frame when browsing with Firefox. It tells you more contextually relevant things about what you’re browsing, and also lets you interact with friends or unknown people who also visited, liked, or purchased those things.

With the API, developers can dive into the information that’s been pulled together by the Glue add-on over time: things that a particular user has displayed an interest in since he or she installed the extension, but also lists of users that liked a specific book, music album or movie. More on the surface, the API can be used to fetch information from ‘the Glue activity stream’, which shows a continuous influx of semantic data generated by its users.

But the most interesting use for the API as far as I’m concerned is the ability to link to a certain object on any Glue site and receive structured information about it straight away. I can see a lot of potential for other web services to integrate that information into their own tools. Finally, the interactive features Glue users enjoy from the toolbar (think likes, comments and replies) can henceforth be built into third-party applications as well.

Developers, go check it out and let us know what you can come up with. Don’t forget to tell AdaptiveBlue about your app(s) either: the company is running an API launch contest which gives you the chance to win some prizes and swag in return for the cool stuff you create with their data.

(Image from Webmonkey)

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