Tag: “Relay Therapeutics”

20 July 2020 – 5G & IoT Provider Jio Platforms Gains $4.5bn from Google

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The Big Ones

Jio Platforms was spun off by Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries late last year to build a mobile network tailored for 5G and the internet of things, and everyone seems to want a slice. The latest is Google, which is paying $4.5bn for a 7.7% stake in Jio, the deal coming in the wake of parent company Alphabet’s recent pledge to invest some $10bn in India over the coming years. Qualcomm Ventures and Intel Capital had supplied a total of $350m for it earlier this month – Qualcomm’s actually came only a few days before Google’s investment. Meanwhile Facebook paid $5.7bn for a 10% stake in April.

Alphabet announced that it intends to channel up to $10bn into India through a newly formed vehicle dubbed Google for India Digitization Fund. That commitment will include equity funding for domestic companies, though as yet it’s unclear whether that will be deployed through the corporate’s investment subsidiaries. One of them, CapitalG, has already invested in several Indian companies but GV is yet to establish a presence in the region.

There’s been more IPO action this past week, beginning with electric vehicle battery producer Farasis Energy, which raised approximately $486m in an offering on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Star Market. It raised a reported $193m from investors including strategic partner Daimler earlier this month, and the corporate venturing arm of another carmaker, BAIC, is also among its shareholders.

On GUV, Paige, a US-based cancer pathology software spinout of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, extended its series B round to $70m with commitments from Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking Division and Healthcare Venture Partners. Both were returning investors from previous tranches. The initial series B close last year had also featured Brey Capital, private investor Kenan Turnacioglu and undisclosed funds. Leo Grady, chief executive of Paige, told GUV: “The past year has underscored the need for pathology to adopt a digital workflow. As hospitals and labs look for solutions, they are seeing Paige as uniquely positioned: providing an enterprise solution for digital pathology images across sites and scanners while leveraging advanced cancer detection and characterisation solutions to provide additional information to the pathologist during diagnosis.”

Deals

RobinHood has seen demand for its share trading platform skyrocket during the Covid-19 lockdown, so much so it’s delayed the app’s UK launch. It has added 3 million new accounts and has followed that by adding $320m to a series F round that now stands at $600m. The company, which is backed by Alphabet unit CapitalG and Roc Nation, secured the capital at an $8.3bn valuation and has now raised a total of nearly $1.5bn in venture funding.

UiPath, a developer of robotic process automation technology that facilitates the automation of repetitive tasks like data entry, can also be said to be a company with a lockdown-relevant product. It has pulled in $225m through a series E round featuring Tencent that boosted its valuation from $7bn in May 2019 to $10.2bn post-money. CapitalG is also among UiPath’s investors, having first backed it in a 2018 series B round.

In Japan, ride hailing platform Mobility Technologies (MoT) has agreed up to $211m in corporate funding, with the lion’s share to come from mobile network operator NTT Docomo. The round included Dentsu and Tokyo Century and it shows the benefits of pivoting when the time is right. MoT began life as a taximeter software producer but has raised money from investors also including Toyota and Kakao Mobility since it switched tack.

Another Salesforce-backed company, Auth0, is also valued at $1.9bn, following a $120m series F round led by corporate VC vehicle Salesforce Ventures. Telstra Ventures also took part in the round, as did Deutsche Telekom’s DTCP unit, and the user authentication software provider intends to leverage Deutsche Telekom’s resources as it expands internationally. It has now secured more than $330m altogether.

Qumulo, developer of a cloud-based data management system, has completed a $125m series E round led by BlackRock that took its total funding above $350m. The cash was secured at a valuation of more than $1.2bn and it comes roughly two years after a series D round featuring disk drive manufacturer Western Digital. The cash will support product development and international growth.

Funds

We already had one huge fund but there was another last week: 23 biopharmaceutical companies have provided a total of almost $1bn in capital for AMR Action Fund, a vehicle tasked with helping to combat antimicrobial resistance by investing in companies developing new antibiotics. Those backers include Pfizer, Merck & Co and Johnson & Johnson, which are each supplying $100m. AMR Action Fund is slated to begin operations in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Exits

Small molecule cancer drug developer Relay Therapeutics has bagged $400m from its initial public offering, increasing the number of shares by more than a third and floating above its range. Its shaves have also risen post-IPO, providing a success story that’s badly needed for its largest investor, SoftBank Vision Fund. Although Vision Fund’s consumer-facing investments have been somewhat patchy, its life sciences deals seem to be paying off.

Banking software provider nCino has raised $250m in a flotation that saw it float a full $7 above its range. Its shares then nearly tripled in their first day of trading yesterday to give it a valuation of more than $1.9bn. The IPO is also a success for Salesforce, which owns a 12% stake having invested $72m in nCino between 2016 and late last year.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

29 June 2020 – Sana Biotechnology Raises $700m in First Round

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The Big Ones

There is a true IPO bonanza going on at the moment and we’ll get to that in a moment, but there’s still a good deal of money sloshing around the sector for early-stage deals too. Sana Biotechnology is working on a string of drug candidates utilising stem cell technology and has raised a huge $700m for its first funding round. The participants include GV, whose diversification into life sciences has so far been very successful, the unit’s exits including Ipierian, Editas Medicine and Flatiron Health. Sana’s technology was developed by researchers at Harvard Medical School, University of Washington’s School of Medicine and UC San Francisco, in partnership with a team at incubator Flagship Pioneering.

Amazon formed its Alexa Fund five years ago but in recent times has made some hefty investments off its own balance sheet, not least in the transport sector where it has backed huge rounds for the likes of Rivian and Aurora Innovation. The corporate has now followed that by committing $2bn to a vehicle called the Climate Pledge Fund, which will invest in developers of products or services that can accelerate carbon reduction. Sectors in its eyeline include renewable energy, transport, logistics, manufacturing and materials, food and agriculture.

The IPO market – particularly in the life sciences sector – may explain why Invitae has splashed out to purchase precision oncology technology provider ArcherDX. Founded by Qiagen in 2015, ArcherDX had actually filed to go public earlier this month but Invitae has stepped in to agree a cash-and-shares acquisition valued at $1.4bn. That’s past tense, as the 30 million Inivtae shares included in the deal subsequently shot up by more than 40% in price on the public markets.

Deals

Sonder should in theory be one of the companies most affected by the coronavirus and indeed, the short-term apartment rental service reportedly fired or furloughed a third of its staff while selling off some 2,000 properties. But it claims it is back at 80% capacity right now and has secured $170m in series E funding from investors including property developer Lennar. The cash was raised at a $1.3bn valuation and Sonder aims to add another $30m before it’s closed.

Agricultural product and services provider Indigo has reportedly added $100m to a series F round featuring FedEx that now stands at $300m. FedEx backed the first tranche in January and Indigo, which is valued at $3.5bn, is said to be targeting $500m for a final close. The round’s other participants include Riverstone Holdings and existing backers Flagship Pioneering and Alaska Permanent Fund.

Pionyr Immunotherapies, a US-based immuno-oncology developer commercialising research from University of Toronto (UofT) and University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has secured a $275m commitment from biopharmaceutical firm Gilead Sciences, which will acquire a 49.9% in Pionyr through the deal. The transaction forms part of a larger agreement worth up to $1.47bn that gives the corporate an exclusive option to purchase the remaining shares for another $315m and make potential milestone payments totalling up to $1.15bn.

Synchrony Financial and corporate venturing units MassMutual Ventures and Blue Venture Fund all contributed to a $100m round for Payfone, a provider of user authentication technology for phone-based customer services. The round nearly doubled Payfone’s overall funding, which makes sense considering its technology would feasibly be in greater demand in the wake of increased remote buying during coronavirus-related lockdowns.

Synqa, the Southeast Asian fintech provider formerly known as Omise, has bagged $80m in a series C round co-led by Siam Commercial Bank’s SCB 10X subsidiary. The round included insurer Aioi Nissay Dowa, Toyota Financial Services Corporation, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and its SMBC Venture Capital unit. Synqa, whose earlier backers also include Sinar Mas, has built a mobile wallet and a crypto token trading network, and will use the series C cash to widen the range of products it offers.

Optum’s corporate venturing unit, Optum Ventures, has led or co-led four rounds in the past week, the latest being a $64m series C for Somatus. Kidney care provider Somatus has now secured $105m in total and will put the cash into geographical expansion and product development.

Ojo Labs, the developer of an AI chatbot for use in real estate deals, has completed a $62.5m round featuring Royal Bank of Canada and Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures. The company’s overall funding now stands at approximately $134m and it used part of the latest cash influx to buy online real estate portal Movoto in a deal that allowed another corporate, property developer Mitsui Fudosa, to exit.

Funds

Netherlands-based, healthcare-focused venture capital firm BioGeneration Ventures closed its fourth fund having raised €105m ($119m) from limited partners including pharmaceutical firm Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS). BMS and fellow existing backers Schroder Adveq and the European Investment Fund (EIF) joined newly minted LPs including Industriens Pension and KfW Capital in contributing to the oversubscribed BGV IV.

US-based talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA) formed an investment vehicle with venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA) that was launched with $100m in capital according to the Hollywood Reporter (not a publication we get to cite often on here!) Connect Ventures will leverage the existing relationships CAA has in the sports and entertainment industries, and the Hollywood Reporter stated that the companies plan to invest up to $400m through the venture.

Material Impact, a US-based venture capital firm with a keen interest in spinouts, has closed its second fund at $200m with limited partners including the endowments of Harvard and Princeton universities. Material Impact was founded in 2015 to invest in material science technologies and has backed more than half a dozen university spinouts to date through its first, $110m fund.

UK-based venture capital firm Epidarex Capital has closed a fund of more than £102m ($127m) to invest in life sciences companies, including spinouts, across the UK. The capital was supplied by the universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester, as well as government-owned British Business Bank, which made a $62m cornerstone investment through its Enterprise Capital Funds program, and pension scheme Strathclyde Pension Fund. A range of undisclosed, international backers have also invested in the fund.

Exits

One of the largest IPOs is set to be Agora, a Chinese provider of video engagement technology for app developers. The SIG-backed company will float later today in a $350m IPO that values it at $2bn, while three existing investors are pumping in a further $130m in the form of a private placement. The most interesting thing is that while Agora’s sales have jumped this year its Q1 revenue is still below $40m, which implies that while losses may not be a huge factor in a successful flotation, revenue may not be either.

Forma Therapeutics went public on the same day as Celgene Switzerland and BMS-backed precision cancer drug developer Repare Therapeutics in its $253m listing, and like Repare, Forma has closed an upsized IPO, having raised a total of $319m. The price of the Novartis and Eli Lilly-backed company’s shares have more than doubled since, indicating the current IPO gold rush is very far from over.

China-based Genetron Holdings, which is working on its own precision cancer treatments, has certainly shown the potential in that space. It has floated in the US in a $256m initial public offering that involved it adding on 3 million shares and then pricing them 19% above the IPO range. Vcanbio Cell & Gene Engineering has achieved an exit through the flotation, having invested in Genetron in 2016.

Relay Therapeutics – based on research from MIT, UC San Francisco and Brandeis University – has filed for its own IPO and has set an initial target of $200m. The precision cancer drug developer raised $400m in a 2018 series C round led by $300m from SoftBank Vision Fund and backed by GV and Alexandria Venture Investments. The trend of late has been for IPO candidates to price their offerings above the range, so this may turn out to be one of Vision Fund’s success stories. Right now it may be regretting not putting more money into life sciences deals.

Gene therapy developer Poseida Therapeutics has become the next biotech company to get in line to go public and has filed to raise up to $115m. Novartis provided half the capital in Poseida’s last round, a series C that closed at $150m nearly a year ago, and has a 14.9% stake. Its other backers include Transposagen Biopharmaceuticals, and the IPO proceeds will fund clinical development of prostate and bone marrow cancer treatments.

That isn’t – and I can’t believe I’m saying this – actually all the IPO stories from the past week so do head to GCV and GUV to read about the others, too.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

18 December 2017 – OneWeb Follows SpaceX with a $500m Investment

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Deals

Days after SpaceX raised $1bn in funding, another satellite technology company, OneWeb, is lining up a $500m investment from SoftBank, which had previously put up $1bn of the $1.2bn OneWeb raised a year ago. .

Office software producer Kingsoft spun cloud storage business Kingsoft Cloud out in 2012 but has retained a majority stake now sized at 52%. It also invested $150m of the $300m in series D funding Kingsoft Cloud just raised at a $1.9bn valuation, bringing its total funding to approximately $500m.

Reports for most of this year have been touting a $200m corporate investment in Indian online grocer BigBasket, and the latest news is that Alibaba will pay $200m for a 25% stake in the company as part of a $280m round.

Koch Disruptive Technologies, a newly formed vehicle for conglomerate Koch Industries, has made its first investment, leading a $150m series E round for InSightec, the developer of a magnetic resonance-equipped ultrasound surgical device.

There have been some big deals in the space sector recently, and the latest is iSpace, a lunar exploration company that’s just closed $90.2m in series A funding, the largest series A round in Japan’s history.

NextDoor, the social media platform focused on local communities, has raised $75m from undisclosed investors at a valuation indicated by a regulatory filing to be about $1.5bn.

AI chip developer ThinkForce has secured $68m in a series A round featuring machine vision technology developer Yitu Technology as well as Sequoia Capital China, Yunfeng Capital and Yitu backer Hillhouse Capital.

Online razor seller Harry’s has raised $63.7m in funding, according to a regulatory filing, cash that will reportedly be put towards a complementary acquisition.

GV has participated in a $63m series B round closed by oncology therapy developer Relay Therapeutics that took the company’s overall funding to $120m.

Insikt, the Rakuten-backed operator of an online lending platform for the un(der)banked, has raised $50m in a series D round led by Grupo Coppel that took its total funding past the $100m mark.

Swedish mobile payment and small business revenue technology provider iZettle has secured about $47m in a Dawn Capital-led round that included the Fourth Swedish National Pension Fund, at a reported valuation of about $950m.

We’ve had several GGV deals already, and on GUV, the biggest deal was US-based immuno-oncology developer Pionyr Immunotherapeutics, which raised $62m in series B funding from a consortium that featured spinout-focused investment firm Osage University Partners.

Funds

Auto parts supplier Valeo has provided 25% of the money for a $226m car technology fund formed by private equity firm Cathay Capital, joining government-owned Yangtze River Industry Fund as a cornerstone investor.

On GGV, the EU-owned European Investment Fund contributed funding to investment firm LSP’s second medtech vehicle, LSP Health Economics Fund 2 (LSP HEF 2), which reached an oversubscribed close of €280m ($330m).

And on GUV, UM Ventures, the tech transfer office for the University of Maryland System (UMS), has unveiled plans for a venture fund of undisclosed size aimed at retaining university-linked startups in the city of Baltimore.

Here’s an interesting one from GUV as well: Imperial College London and Tsinghua University have joined forces to seed a $300,000 fund called the Tsinghua-Imperial Research and Innovation Fund to back early-stage scientific research.

Exits

Gilead Sciences has agreed to acquire T cell receptor therapy developer Cell Design Labs in a deal that could value it at up to $567m, six years after Kite Pharma, now a Gilead subsidiary, took a 12.2% stake by backing a $34.4m round that remained Cell Design’s only funding.

Apple has reportedly lined up a $400m acquisition of music identification app developer Shazam. The deal would provide exits for América Móvil, Sony, Universal and Access Industries, but none look likely to make a profitable return on their investments, Shazam’s valuation having peaked at about $1bn in 2015.

On GUV we’ve had two IPO-related news this past week. First up, Mirriad, a UK-based video technology spinout from University of Surrey, is targeting £26.2m ($35m) in gross proceeds in its initial public offering on Aim. Mirriad, which will enter the public markets under the ticker symbol Miri tomorrow (that’s Tuesday, December 19 for those of you listening later).

Then we also have Fusion Antibodies, a UK-based genomics modelling platform spun out of Queen’s University Belfast, which will raise £5.5m ($7.4m) in its initial public offering on Aim.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

19 September 2016 – Clear Vision Investment, A Fund for Baidu and Russian State Exits plus much more

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Deals

AcuFocus, developer of a medical device that improves near vision, has raised $66m in a KKR-led round.

Microprocessor and system-on-chip technology developer Soft Machines came out of stealth mode in late 2014 with $125m from investors including AMD and Samsung, and has raised almost $175m from backers also including GlobalFoundries.

3D printing technology developer Carbon has added $81m to the $100m in series C capital it raised in August 2015, taking its overall funding to $222m.

Protein motion drug developer Relay Therapeutics has launched with $57m of funding partly supplied by biochemistry researcher DE Shaw.

A nice crossover between corporate, government and university came from France, where Eyevensys achieved a final close of its series A at $10m.

Funds

Baidu is looking to launch of a CVC unit called Baidu Venture that will target AI, virtual and augmented reality technology, and Baidu is initially looking to raise $200m to invest.

Sapphire Ventures broke off from its old parent company SAP in 2011 and officially changed its name from SAP Ventures three years later, but that doesn’t mean the two are strangers. SAP has just provided $1bn of capital for Sapphire.

Speaking of big funds, GV co-founder Bill Maris is reportedly in talks with investors for a new venture firm and is said to be targeting between $350m and $500m for its first fund.

Canada’s government has awarded $5m to the Capital expansion région Thetford fund for a venture capital vehicle that will support entrepreneurs in Quebec county Les Appalaches.

Canada-based VC firm Information Venture Partners, which achieved a $96m second close of its latest fund.

Bpifrance backed the first $52m close of incubator iBionext’s $112m growth fund that should help the Parisian startup foundry set up quite a few more businesses.

UC Berkeley meanwhile put some cash into the House Fund, a $6m fund set up by its alumnus Jeremy Fiance, and Warwick University is hoping to open a Centre for Innovation at its upcoming California campus, modelled on its original, England-based tech transfer office Warwick Ventures.

Exits

Crispr has filed for an IPO.

LED sensor technology provider Sensity Systems has agreed to an acquisition by Verizon that will give exits to Cisco Investments, Acuity Brands, GE Ventures and Simon Property.

Naspers subsidiary PayU is set to acquire Indian mobile payment services provider Citrus Pay in a $130m all-cash deal that will give exits to eContext and Beenos.

Concur has agreed to buy travel price comparison platform Hipmunk, allowing Nokia Growth Partners, which invested an undisclosed sum in the company two years ago, to exit.

Intel has reportedly agreed to buy semiconductor technology developer Soft Machines in a $250m deal that will provide exits to two Russian state-owned entities.

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company, an insurance provider backed by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek, is hoping to raise Rs60bn ($900m) in an initial public offering today, that is Monday, September 19.

One sadder exit we have to talk about unfortunately is online lifestyle media company Mode Media. While the unicorn carnage predicted by some at the end of 2015 has yet to manifest, that doesn’t mean there won’t still be casualties. Mode Media, valued at $1bn in a 2013 round when it was still known as Glam, shut down on Thursday after failing to find a buyer or investors willing to provide financing. Its investors included Hubert Burda Media, which invested $30m in 2015, shortly after forming a strategic partnership with Mode.

People

Imperial Create Lab, the innovation community of Imperial College London and its Imperial Innovations investment arm, revealed a host of changes: Mark Hammond and Dominic Falcão have left to focus on their incubator Deep Science Ventures. Falcão had been manager of Imperial Create Lab from September 2013. Hammond had been director since January 2012.

Also at Create Lab, Jack Owen, ecosystem builder since January 2016, left to become a postgraduate talent associate at incubator Entrepreneur First, which, as you might remember, closed a $53.7m fund backed by Imperial College London two weeks ago. The new Create Lab team will be made up of Liz Choonara, who has also Imperial College’s enterprise development manager since 2014, and Lauren Dennis, communications and activities intern.

Hearst Ventures president George Kliavkoff has departed to take the chief executive position at virtual reality content developer Jaunt.

And Rich Flynn, who stepped down from his position as president of Apollo Education Ventures in April, has joined Tyton Partners as managing director.

Law and policy

After German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble blocked a startup boosting bill several months ago, the government has now agreed to provide tax breaks to VC investors, making it possible for them to reclaim potential losses.

“Funky Chunk” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0