Oxford Nanopore Technologies Limited announced it received £195 million in funding on May 4, 2021. The financing was an equity round raised at a post-money valuation of £2.48 billion. The transaction included participation from new investors M&G Investment Management, Nikon Corporation, Temasek Holdings, and Wellington Management for £125 million, and existing investors including IP Group Plc for £70 million. M&G Investment Management invested £35 million, and IP Group Plc invested £18.7 million to hold a 14.5% stake in the company. The announced investor group comprised M&G Investment Management, Nikon Corporation, Temasek Holdings, Wellington Management Group LLP, IP Group Plc and other investors. Oxford Nanopore Technologies is described in the article as a sequencing unicorn and develops gene-sequencing devices. The piece reports the company recently raised $105.9M in new cash. That fundraising provided liquidity that allowed some investors to recoup cash. Investors associated with Neil Woodford’s former fund are explicitly mentioned as having recouped some cash. The coverage frames the transaction as offering relief for Woodford-associated funds. The article states the company closed the fundraising transaction. Oxford Nanopore develops portable, real-time long-read DNA/RNA sequencing devices (MinION, GridION, PromethION, Flongle) and uniquely enables direct RNA sequencing and modified-base detection. MinION has been commercially available since 2015 and is used by scientists in more than 70 countries. PromethION is a high-throughput, modular system—article notes >150Gb per PromethION flow cell in early 2018 and customers producing 70–100Gb per flow cell—enabling sub-$1,000 human genomes on long-read data. The company emphasizes simple sample preparation (5–10-minute kit, VolTRAX) and is developing single-test adapters (Flongle) and a forthcoming smartphone sequencer, SmidgION. Oxford Nanopore is expanding global operations with commercial presence in New York, US Cambridge, China, Japan, France and Germany, and new operations opening in Shanghai and San Francisco; new headquarters recently opened in Oxford. The company is scaling manufacturing and R&D to grow applications from infectious-disease surveillance and precision medicine to food- and water-safety monitoring and environmental science. Oxford Nanopore Technologies develops nanopore-based DNA/RNA sequencing platforms, led by the portable MinION. Its product portfolio includes the MinION, high-throughput PromethION, the VolTRAX automated sample/library preparation device, and the mobile-phone compatible SmidgION in its pipeline. The MinION has been commercially available since 2015 and is used by a community in more than 50 countries for real-time, long-read sequencing in lab and field settings. Oxford Nanopore also offers analysis solutions through Metrichor to make analyses accessible to non-experts. The company plans to expand commercial operations—particularly in Asia—add production and sales & marketing resources, and continue rapid improvement of existing products and development of its pipeline. Following the latest placement, the company has raised a total of £351 million. Oxford Nanopore Technologies develops and commercialises nanopore-based electronic systems for single-molecule analysis of DNA, RNA and proteins. Its product portfolio includes the handheld MinION, the high-throughput PromethION, the GridION system, and supporting tools such as VolTRAX for sample preparation and Metrichor for cloud-based real-time analysis. MinION was made commercially available in 2014 and registration has opened for the PromethION Early Access programme. The company focuses on real-time data streaming, improved simplicity, efficiency and scalability of workflows, and low total cost-of-ownership across scientific, medical, crop science, security and environmental applications. Oxford Nanopore raised new funding to support improvements to existing products and services, further develop and expand its pipeline, and expand manufacturing and commercial activities. The fundraising increases the company’s total funds raised to £251 million.

Total raised

$999M

Funding rounds

10

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

May 2021