Alien Technology Corp. today reported it has closed a $66 million round of funding led by SunBridge Partners. The financing is expected to provide capital to continue expansion and drive new market opportunities for radio-frequency identification technology.

Joining SunBridge Partners in the funding are existing Alien investors Advanced Equities, Digital Bandwidth, Equitek Capital, Lago Ventures, and the Miami Valley Venture Fund. This H round of financing brings Alien's total capital investment to more than $200 million.

Typically, venture-capital firms will invest in RFID hardware companies for their intellectual property. SAP AG, which has an investment in RFID software company T3CI, believes there's value in some hardware vendors' intellectual property, too. "It's safer for the VCs to put money in the RFID hardware infrastructure because there is more IP to protect and it's more difficult to find good IP," says Amar Singh, senior VP for supply chain and RFID at SAP.

SunBridge's other investments include semiconductor maker DFT Microsystems, price-optimization software vendor Smarts Japan, and customer-relationship-management software vendor Salesforce.com, according to the company's Web site.