VC Deals Only: ZenBusiness Raises $15M in Series A Funding

VC Deals Only: ZenBusiness Raises $15M in Series A Funding: ZenBusiness , an Austin, TX-based online platform to create and run small businesses, closed a $15m Series A venture capital financing. ...

ZenBusiness Raises $15M in Series A Funding

ZenBusiness, an Austin, TX-based online platform to create and run small businesses, closed a $15m Series A venture capital financing.

The round was led by Greycroft, with participation from Lerer Hippeau, and Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund and new investors Rosecliff Venture Partners, Interlock Partners, and Recruit Strategic Partners (RSP).

The company intends to use the funds to further expand its presence and continue to build out the platform and community features.

Led by Ross Buhrdorf, CEO, ZenBusiness provides a leverages Machine Learning (ML) and automation online platform that gives everything needed to start a company as an LLC or Corporation, and operate it over time through a wide array of business services including accounting, taxes, banking, lending and credit, website, domain, and email.

Since its public launch in early 2018, the company has served thousands of small businesses via its platform.

ZenBusiness is a Public Benefit Corporation.

Source. FinSMEs, September 25, 2019

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VC Deals Only: DeadHappy, the UK pay-as-you-go life insurance pro...

VC Deals Only: DeadHappy, the UK pay-as-you-go life insurance pro...: DeadHappy , a U.K.-based insurtech startup that wants to offer more flexible life insurance and remove the taboo surrounding death, has...

DeadHappy, the UK pay-as-you-go life insurance provider, raises £4M Series A

DeadHappy, a U.K.-based insurtech startup that wants to offer more flexible life insurance and remove the taboo surrounding death, has raised £4 million in Series A funding. Backing comes from e.ventures, alongside the company’s seed investor Octopus Ventures.

Founded in 2017, DeadHappy claims to be the U.K.’s “first fully digital pay-as-you-go life insurance provider.” It offers flexible life insurance policies that are designed to be “cheaper, easier and better” than existing traditional providers. This includes pricing insurance based on your current circumstances and the option to add (or remove) further coverage on a rolling basis.

More broadly, the startup is developing what it calls its “Deathwish” platform, which is something akin to a will. The idea is that you can specify how you wish any future insurance payout to be used, such as paying off your mortgage. And there are also plans to incorporate other wishes not related to finances.

“Our vision is to change attitudes to death and we are tackling that in a number of ways,” DeadHappy co-founder Phil Zeidler tells me. “Despite death being the one certainty humans face, it remains for many a taboo subject, and the failure to talk about it and plan for it is both counterintuitive and leads to significant further trauma at the most difficult of times for family and loved ones.”

Currently the Deathwish platform offers financially motivated Deathwishes, but the longer-term plan is to enable practical Deathwishes, such as making sure your funeral is the way you want it, and what Zeidler calls emotionally motivated Deathwishes.

The idea is to help offer a way to help loved ones “achieve something meaningful in their lives, whether that’s learning how to play the drums or funding an expedition to the Amazon,” he explains.

“Crucially, customers can share these Deathwishes as they choose, which is a practical tool to ensure their wishes are clear and understood. Our platform acts as a catalyst for opening a conversation with loved ones and a place to share recorded video messages and stories.”

Meanwhile, DeadHappy says it will use the new funding for future growth by further building the technology and capabilities of its Deathwish platform. It also plans to expand its product and partnership offerings to major financial service distributors.

Source. TechCrunch, Steve O'Hear, September 27, 2019

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VC Deals Only: VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. Spanish startup El...

VC Deals Only: VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. Spanish startup El...: VC Deals A company developing a bispecific antibody that already has clinical data in blood cancers has raised more than $60 million in it...

VC Deals Only: VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. Spanish startup El...

VC Deals Only: VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. Spanish startup El...: VC Deals A company developing a bispecific antibody that already has clinical data in blood cancers has raised more than $60 million in it...

VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. Spanish startup Elma gets $3.2M for a digital-first health insurance play

VC Deals

A company developing a bispecific antibody that already has clinical data in blood cancers has raised more than $60 million in its latest venture capital funding round that it plans to use to advance the drug in solid tumors. More

Complete Solar, Inc., today announced it has raised $9 million in equity funding led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund. Additional participating investment came from the Libra Foundation.  More

Kitchen United, which operates a growing network of shared kitchen spaces for restaurants around the U.S., announced today it has closed a Series B round for $40 million. More

Machine translation platform Unbabel has raised $60 million in a series C round of funding led by Point72 Ventures, with participation from Microsoft’s M12, Greycroft, Scale Venture Partners, Notion Capital, Caixa Capital, Faber Ventures, FundersClub, Structure Capital, Indico Capital Partners, and E.ventures.  More

Intel Capital, the venture arm of chipmaker Intel, has led a $25 million series B funding round in optical connectivity startup DustPhotonics, Inc., the latter announced Monday. WRVI Capital and Israeli serial entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz also participated in the round.  More

Landline, the operator of a bus network in the Midwest, is one of the latest companies to raise venture capital. The business has closed a $3.85 million round led by Los Angeles firm Upfront Ventures, with participation from Mucker Capital and Matchstick

Ventures.  More

Eko, a San Francisco, CA-based AI-powered digital health company, closed $20M Series B funding. The round was led by Artis Ventures with participation from DigiTx Partners, NTT Venture Capital (NTTVC), 3M Ventures, Mayo Clinic, Seraph Group, and XTX Ventures. The company intends to use the funds to drive further research and commercialization of its machine learning platform. More

Little-known and super quiet biotech Amphivena Therapeutics has grabbed a strong and healthy $62 million series C round funding haul. The Californian company says this new swag will go toward boosting its in-progress work for AMV564, a bivalent, bispecific T-cell engager that binds CD33 and CD3 in phase 1 for certain blood cancers, as well as in a solid tumor test.  More

Insurtech startup Elma has closed a €3 million (~$3.2M) Series A funding round led by Mangrove Capital partners to build out a digital-first health insurance business starting with Spain, its domestic market.  More

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New Funds

Mohan Kumar, a former partner at Norwest Venture Partners and Nishant Rao, the former chief operating officer at the Chennai-based SaaS firm Freshworks, have launched Avataar Venture Partners, whose maiden fund will have HarbourVest, the global fund-of-funds, as its single Limited Partner or sponsor.  More

Exits

Facebook is buying CTRL-labs, a NY-based startup building an armband that translates movement and the wearer’s neural impulses into digital input signals.  More

Legal

Comscore, a company that’s performance metrics are widely touted in the media world, has settled with the SEC following charges of inflating its own metrics. The company and its former CEO Serge Matta have been charged with fraud by the SEC and have agreed to pay $5 million and $700,000 respectively, in a settlement.  More

VC Deals Only: Summer wants to vanquish student loans for borrowe...

VC Deals Only: Summer wants to vanquish student loans for borrowe...: $1.5 trillion. That’s the amount of outstanding student loan debt held by American citizens according to the New York Fed . It is an astro...

Summer wants to vanquish student loans for borrowers, and now has $10M to do it

$1.5 trillion. That’s the amount of outstanding student loan debt held by American citizens according to the New York Fed. It is an astronomical sum, and has led to much hand-wringing about whether there is a coming bubble in U.S. higher education.

What’s even worse than the scale of the debt load though is the fact that for millions of borrowers, they literally don’t have to pay some of those dollars. Thanks to the complexity of the loan system in the U.S., borrowers often qualify for repayment programs that can lead to loan forgiveness, that is, if they can figure out the terms, apply correctly, and actively follow the rules to net the write-off.

Enter Summer. The public benefit corporation is on a mission to act as a “trusted advisor” to student loan borrowers. Through its platform, borrowers can get a full 360-degree view of their current student loan situation, and begin exploring options for how to repay it in the most financially efficient way possible.

The company’s early traction has brought it a new round of venture capital. The company announced this morning that QED Investors, one of the leading early-stage fintech investors out there, led a $10 million series A round in the company. Partner Matt Risley led the deal, who joined QED about two year ago from European fintech giant Klarna, where he was CFO.

Co-founder and CEO Will Sealy analogized Summer to how tax accountants help filers handle the complexities of doing their taxes. “We’re trying to create the software that democratizes [student loan] expertise, that gets the expertise into the hands of the end consumer, who might not be able to afford an accountant that doesn’t even unfortunately exist in the student loan space at this current moment,” he said.

He noted that the company is building out support for 120 loan forgiveness programs and their complicated rules, and has its eyes on more than a hundred other student loan proposals that are sitting in state legislatures across the country.

The company was started at Yale by Sealy and co-founders Paul Joo and Vincent Tran, and the trio eventually migrated to New York City while building the team to 13 according to its staffing page. Sealy previously worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in DC in the Office of Students, where he worked on precisely the challenges of getting students better access to quality information around student loan programs.

So far, Summer, which launched in 2017, has helped 10,000 borrowers to date, and “just in this year, we have helped borrowers save $8 million,” Sealy said. “A critical metric is not just how many people we are engaging, but how much money we’re saving them.”

Summer does not charge end users to use its product. Instead, it sells through enterprises and other types of organizations to offer the product as a benefit to employees. Sealy gave the example of medical associations, who could offer Summer to recent medical school graduates, or companies who want to entice recent grads with a simple tool that can improve their financial lives.

Summer currently works retrospectively, in that it targets users who are post-grads. I asked why Summer didn’t focus prospectively on helping borrowers think through their student loan products before they take them on. Sealy replied that “In many ways, it feels like the house is on fire. So before we would ever go about trying to create a better smoke detector and build a new home, we want to save the people who are currently struggling.”

Risley of QED explained his rationale for leading the round. “QED, like the rest of the investors like General Catalyst and Story Ventures, we put a pretty big round into this company on the belief that there’s an urgent problem facing these student loan borrowers and we’re working hard to … scale to meet the needs of tens of millions of student borrowers.” With 10,000 users and $8 million saved, you can start to project out the potential impact Summer could have for many borrowers.

In addition to QED, the round had participation from General Catalyst, Greycroft, NextView Ventures, and Story Ventures.

Update: Changed the lead partner’s name from Matt Burton to Matt Risley at QED.

Source. TechCrunch, Danny Crichton, September 26, 2019

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VC Deals Only: Eko Completes $20M in Series B Funding

VC Deals Only: Eko Completes $20M in Series B Funding: Eko , a San Francisco, CA-based AI-powered digital health company, closed $20M Series B funding. The round was led by Artis Ventures wi...

Eko Completes $20M in Series B Funding

Eko, a San Francisco, CA-based AI-powered digital health company, closed $20M Series B funding.

The round was led by Artis Ventures with participation from DigiTx Partners, NTT Venture Capital (NTTVC), 3M Ventures, Mayo Clinic, Seraph Group, and XTX Ventures.

The company intends to use the funds to drive further research and commercialization of its machine learning platform.

Founded in 2013 by Connor Landgraf, Jason Bellet, and Tyler Crouch, Eko is a digital health company building machine learning tools to fight heart disease. Its cardiac monitor combines digital stethoscope and ECG technology both for in-clinic and at-home monitoring, which enables patients to send cardiac data to their physicians. The company is collaborating with medical device and pharmaceutical companies to create combinations of therapies and data to help personalize cardiac care.

Eko will also grow its focus on clinical research, investing more in its collaborations with the Mayo Clinic, Northwestern Medicine, and UCSF. Expanding its collaborative studies will enable the company to build algorithms with robust datasets targeted to specific conditions, including atrial fibrillation and valvular heart disease, as well as congestive heart failure and structural heart disease.

Source. FinSMEs, September, 26, 2019

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VC Deals Only: Amphivena raises $62M Series C round to develop bi...

VC Deals Only: Amphivena raises $62M Series C round to develop bi...: A company developing a bispecific antibody that already has clinical data in blood cancers has raised more than $60 million in its latest ...

Amphivena raises $62M Series C round to develop bispecific antibody in solid tumors

A company developing a bispecific antibody that already has clinical data in blood cancers has raised more than $60 million in its latest venture capital funding round that it plans to use to advance the drug in solid tumors.

South San Francisco, California-based Amphivena Therapeutics said Tuesday that it had raised $62 million in a Series C round, which NanoDimension and Qiming Venture Partners co-led. New investors included Clough Capital, Aju IB, Korys Merieux, Kaitai Capital, Industrial Investors and Nawton Limited, along with insider investors MPM Capital and funds managed by Tekla Capital Management and Franklin Berger.

The company is developing a bispecific T-cell engager antibody called AMV564, which targets CD33 and CD3. Such antibodies are immunotherapies designed to work by targeting both cancer cell-surface proteins and proteins expressed on the surfaces of T cells, enabling the latter to kill the former. The company has been developing the drug for acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes, and it is currently in a Phase I study among relapsed or refractory AML.

The drug is designed to eliminate myeloid-derived suppressor cells, or MDSCs, while sparing normal neutrophils and monocytes. In addition to MDS and AML, the drug is in a Phase I study for solid tumors that the company said is open for enrollment, though searches for the name of the company of the drug on ClinicalTrials.gov only turned up the MDS and AML trials.

Updated data from the AML study presented at the European Hematology Association’s 2019 annual meeting in July from 33 patients across nine dose cohorts showed a complete response, a complete response with incomplete hematological recovery and a partial response. Grade 1 and 2 cytokine release syndrome – a side effect sometimes observed with bispecific antibodies – also occurred.

Amgen’s Blincyto (blinatumomab) is a bispecific T-cell engager currently on the market. The drug targets the CD19 antigen in acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Amgen is developing another bispecific antibody, AMG 420, that targets the BCMA antigen in multiple myeloma and produced a 70 percent overall response rate among patients who received the drug at 400 micrograms, the dose recommended for further study. Another bispecific antibody on the market is Roche’s Hemlibra (emicizumab-kxwh), used to treat hemophilia A.

In late June, the Food and Drug Administration issued a draft guidance for companies developing bispecific antibodies, in oncology as well as other disease areas. However, an expert said the guidance was flawed because it did not distinguish between Blincyto and Hemlibra’s very different mechanisms of action, despite both products falling under the category of “bispecific.”

Source. Medcity News, September, 24, 2019,  Alaric Dearment

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VC Deals Only: Complete Solar Raises $9M in Funding

VC Deals Only: Complete Solar Raises $9M in Funding: Complete Solar , a San Ramon, CA-based solar tech company, raised $9M in equity funding. The round was led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund ...

Complete Solar Raises $9M in Funding

Complete Solar, a San Ramon, CA-based solar tech company, raised $9M in equity funding.

The round was led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund with participation from the Libra Foundation.

The company intends to use the funds to expand:

– its market reach, which includes enabling non-solar sales channels to grow their respective product offerings through its reseller program amd

– its product offerings to include electric car chargers, battery back-up systems, electric heat pumps, roofing, and other home energy upgrades by cross promoting its partners’ energy products.

Led by CEO Will Anderson, Complete Solar provides a platform offering sales tools and diverse financing options to companies looking to offer solar energy systems to homeowners. Since 2016, the company has partnered with over 100 companies across California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Utah and Arizona, which specialize in solar sales as well as established companies in adjacent fields, such as HVAC companies, roofing companies, and new home builders.

Source. FinSMEs, September, 23, 2019

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VC Deals Only: Kitchen United Raises $40M for Its Ghost Kitchen N...

VC Deals Only: Kitchen United Raises $40M for Its Ghost Kitchen N...: Kitchen United, which operates a growing network of shared kitchen spaces for restaurants around the U.S., announced today it has closed a...

Kitchen United Raises $40M for Its Ghost Kitchen Network, Expands East

Kitchen United, which operates a growing network of shared kitchen spaces for restaurants around the U.S., announced today it has closed a Series B round for $40 million. The round was co-led by RXR Realty and GV (formerly Google Ventures), with participation by funds managed by Fidelity Investments Canada ULC, DivcoWest and G Squared. Existing investors and founders John Miller, Harry Tsao, and others participated, too. This brings KU’s total funding raised to $50 million.

The popularity of ghost kitchens — also known as “virtual kitchens,” “kitchen as a service,” and a slew of other monikers — has skyrocketed in recent months as restaurants large and small try to meet the demands of this delivery-crazed era we live in.

Kitchen United, which launched in 2017 in Pasadena, CA, has been at the forefront of this movement with its growing network of facilities that can house between 10 and 20 ghost kitchens per location and are home to brands like The Halal Guys, Wetzel’s Pretzels, Canter’s Deli, and others.

In October 2028, Kitchen United got a $10 million investment from Google’s parent company and CaliBurger CEO John Miller.

With the new investment, KU will be moving into more locations — the NYC market in particular. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, part of the deal with RXR Realty involves opening ghost kitchen facilities on RXR properties in the city as well as the tristate area. Such a partnership is wise on KU’s part as the company looks to expand into cities known for astronomical rents when it comes to large spaces. KU will expand to several RXR properties, starting with Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Stamford, CT.

The company currently operates a facility in Chicago as well as its original one in Pasadena. As the press release noted, locations for Scottsdale, AZ and Austin, TX will open soon. And the company is also looking to expand to other major metropolises like San Francisco, Boston, and Los Angeles — also cities where a deal with a real estate company might not be a bad idea.

In New York, at least, Kitchen United will compete with the newly opened Zuul Kitchens, who just opened their first location in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood and is focusing on that market for further expansion.

Source. The Spoon, September 19, 2019

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Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

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VC Deals Only: VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. Strip District tru...

VC Deals Only: VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. Strip District tru...: VC Deals Firefly Health , a Boston, MA-based technology-powered concierge medicine service for average Americans, raised $10.2m in Seri...

VC Deals Only. Weekend Edition. Strip District trucker safety startup closes on $8 million financing round

VC Deals

Firefly Health, a Boston, MA-based technology-powered concierge medicine service for average Americans, raised $10.2m in Series A funding round. The financing was led by F-Prime Capital and Oak HC/FT. In addition, athenahealth Co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer, Jonathan Bush, will serve as Executive Chairman. F-Prime Capital Partner Carl Byers and Oak HC/FT General Partner Nancy Brown will join the Board of Directors. More

Voyage, the autonomous vehicle startup that spun out of Udacity, announced Thursday it has raised $31 million in a round led by Franklin Templeton. Khosla Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures and Chevron Technology Ventures also participated in the round. The company, which operates a ride-hailing service in retirement communities using self-driving cars supported by human safety drivers, has raised a total of $52 million since launching in 2017.  More

Artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly large role in enterprise software, and Boston’s DataRobot has been helping companies build, manage and deploy machine learning models for some time now. Today, the company announced a $206 million Series E investment led by Sapphire Ventures. More

Themis has raised €40 million ($44 million). The Merck-backed series D positions Themis to take its chikungunya vaccine through a phase 3 trial and move the lead candidate from its immuno-oncology R&D program into humans.  More

A Strip District-based data and analytics company involved with trucker safety has closed on an $8 million Series A financing round. The financing round for Idelic Inc. was led by Origin Ventures with participation from TDF Ventures, Birchmere Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures and SaaS Venture Capital.  More

Normative, a startup that lets companies automate their carbon reporting — and in turn help them decrease their environmental footprint — has picked up $2.1 million in seed funding. Backing the Stockholm-based company is byFounders, with participation from SoundCloud co-founder Eric Wahlforss, Luminar Ventures and Wave Ventures. More

Versantis, a Zurich, Switzerland-based clinical-stage biotech company developing therapies for rare liver and pediatric diseases, closed a CHF16m Series B financing. The round was led by Swisscanto Invest by Zürcher Kantonalbank with participation from Esperante Ventures, investiere, existing investors Redalpine HealthEquity, and Zürcher Kantonalbank Start-up Finance. More

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Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

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New Funds 

As expectations from seed investors intensify, a new stage of investment has established itself earlier in the venture-backed company life cycle. Known as “pre-seed” investing, one of the first legitimate outfits to double down on the stage has refueled, closing its second fund on $77 million.  More

Most of the venture capital firms covered in TechCrunch and other tech publications compete for a spot on the cap table of the hottest Bay Area, New York or Los Angeles companies of the moment. Few seek out companies in Indianapolis, Milwaukee or Tampa. AOL co-founder and former chief executive officer Steve Case’s venture capital fund, Revolution, deploys capital to companies “outside of the hotbeds.”  More

ArcTern Ventures, a Toronto and Montreal, Canada-based venture capital firm investing globally in breakthrough clean technology companies addressing climate change and sustainability, held the second closing of its Fund II.  More

IPOs

Ping Identity Holding Corp. rose in its trading debut after raising $188 million in its U.S. initial public offering. The software company’s shares rose 34% to $20.11 Thursday in New York trading, giving the company a market value of $1.56 billion. The software company sold 12.5 million shares Wednesday after marketing them for $14 to $16 apiece.  More

Airbnb has said that it will have its initial public offering in 2020.The company is one of the last of the big unicorn herd that grew up roughly a decade ago (a herd that includes Uber, Lyft, The We Company and Postmates) to declare its public market intentions. More

VC Deals Only: Versantis Closes CHF16M Series B Financing Round

VC Deals Only: Versantis Closes CHF16M Series B Financing Round: Versantis , a Zurich, Switzerland-based clinical-stage biotech company developing therapies for rare liver and pediatric diseases, closed...

Versantis Closes CHF16M Series B Financing Round

Versantis, a Zurich, Switzerland-based clinical-stage biotech company developing therapies for rare liver and pediatric diseases, closed a CHF16m Series B financing.

The round was led by Swisscanto Invest by Zürcher Kantonalbank with participation from Esperante Ventures, investiere, existing investors Redalpine HealthEquity, and Zürcher Kantonalbank Start-up Finance.

With the closing of this financing round, Dr. Robert Schier, Investment Director PE/VC Health-Tech at Swisscanto Invest, will join Versantis’ Board of Directors.

The company intends to use the funds to advance clinical development of novel therapeutics for liver diseases. In particular, the funds will accelerate the completion of ongoing Phase 1b studies with VS-01 and advance its clinical development up to clinical proof-of-efficacy (phase 2a) in 2 indications.

Led by Dr. Vincent Forster, CEO and co-founder, and Dr. Meriam Kabbaj, COO and co-founder, Versantis is a clinical-stage biotech company focused on the development of orphan drugs in liver diseases and pediatric inborn errors of metabolism. The company is pursuing innovative therapies for the acute care of serious liver conditions based on its proprietary liposomes-based detoxification platform technology.

Its lead candidate, VS-01, is currently being evaluated in first-in-human clinical trials, with outcomes expected mid-2020.

Source. FinSMEs, September 19, 2019

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VC Deals Only: Themis raises €40M to run phase 3 chikungunya vacc...

VC Deals Only: Themis raises €40M to run phase 3 chikungunya vacc...: Themis has raised €40 million ($44 million). The Merck-backed series D positions Themis to take its chikungunya vaccine through a phase...

Themis raises €40M to run phase 3 chikungunya vaccine trial

Themis has raised €40 million ($44 million). The Merck-backed series D positions Themis to take its chikungunya vaccine through a phase 3 trial and move the lead candidate from its immuno-oncology R&D program into humans.

Austria’s Themis filed to raise €40 million through an IPO in Amsterdam last year only to hit pause on the plan in the face of “adverse market conditions.” The u-turn left Themis without the vast majority of the €30 million it planned to set aside for the phase 3 chikungunya vaccine trial, forcing it to look into “all strategic options” to fund further development.

Last month, Merck’s investment in Themis as part of a $200 million vaccine R&D deal made it clear that the biotech was lining up a private financing round. Now, Themis has shared further details of the round.

Themis has raised €40 million in a series D round co-led by new backers Farallon Capital and Hadean Ventures, which are respectively based in the U.S. and Scandinavia. Merck and Adjuvant Capital, both of which are U.S.-based, also invested in Themis for the first time, resulting in the biotech bringing in significant funding from North America.

“We definitely wanted to broaden our investor base and increase our financial flexibility. It was a deliberate decision to look for U.S. investors,” Themis CEO Erich Tauber said.

Existing members of the biotech’s syndicate such as Global Health Investment Fund, which led a €10 million series C at the start of last year, also participated, giving Themis €40 million to run a phase 3 chikungunya trial while advancing multiple other programs. Themis already has vaccines against Zika and Lassa fever in the clinic and has other infectious disease candidates in preclinical testing.

The chikungunya phase 3 is due to start in the coming months, enroll thousands of participants and deliver data around the middle of next year. Themis is considering taking the vaccine to market itself.

“It’s definitely a possibility to market a product like chikungunya as a small company. Another model is to partner this globally or regionally. We are working on all three tracks right now,” Tauber said.

Themis is also applying its measles technology to oncology, adding immune modulators and other agents to augment the natural oncolytic activity of the virus. The oncology R&D program started last year and, by leveraging the same manufacturing platform as the infectious disease pipeline, Themis has moved forward quickly. Two oncology drugs are due to enter the clinic by the end of next year.

Source. BioFierce, Nick Paul Taylor, September, 18, 2019

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This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

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