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BA Venture Partners said Wednesday that it's now operating independent of Bank of America under the name Scale Venture Partners.

The Foster City firm is investing a $400 million fund in which BofA, (NYSE: BAC) California's largest bank, is a minority investor along with a group of five to 10 new institutional investors.

"We launched our first fund in 2000 with the goal of eventually bringing in outside investors," said Kate Mitchell, managing director with Scale Venture Partners. "It's gratifying that the market recognized the quality of the team and our top-quartile performance over the last several years."

The firm has been approached regularly by institutional investors, or limited partners, who wanted to participate in the firm's next fund.

The firm worked with San Francisco-based Probitas Partners to market the fund over the past year.

"Probitas Partners understands the venture business well and knows the LP community," Mitchell said.

Certainly, 2006 was a good year for the firm with 8 investment exits through acquisitions or initial public offerings and 29 financings totaling more than $90 million.

Last year's IPOs among its portfolio companies included Somaxon and Omniture. Acquisitions included Outer Bay by Hewlett-Packard, Good Technology by Motorola, Entone by Harmonic and U.S. HealthWorks by a buyout consortium.

In addition, San Mateo-based Glu Mobile and San Diego-based Orexigen filed with regulators last month to go public.

"We haven't had two portfolio companies file to go public in the same month in years," Mitchell said. "Investors are looking for growth opportunities."

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