Led · Debt Financing · Aug 2024

Aspen Aerogels produces aerogel-based thermal insulation and battery materials, including PyroThin®, Cryogel®, and Pyrogel®, aimed at energy infrastructure and EV battery thermal management. The company is focused on electrification and battery-materials initiatives to address thermal runaway and improve lithium-ion battery performance. Management is pursuing capacity expansion, including a planned second aerogel manufacturing facility in Statesboro, Georgia. In August 2024 Aspen arranged a $125 million term loan and a $100 million revolving credit facility with MidCap Financial to reduce its cost of capital and increase financial flexibility. Proceeds from the facilities will be used to cash redeem an existing convertible note; the CFO said the financing supports access to liquidity and profitable revenue growth. Aspen is headquartered in Northborough, Massachusetts, was founded in 2001, employs roughly 201–500 people, and has previously raised $21.5M. Aspen Aerogels supplies reinforced, nanoporous aerogel insulation products and has developed a proprietary blanket form of aerogels. The company’s blanket technology targets a range of markets, including building and construction, chemicals, transportation and oil and gas. Aspen plans to work with BASF to target and rapidly penetrate the European market. The company raised $21.5M (about €15.7M) in an equity financing led by BASF Venture Capital. Aspen was founded in 2001 and is based in Northborough, Massachusetts. It currently employs 120 people.

Participated · Debt Financing · Feb 2023

Marco is building an operating system for Latin American SME exporters engaged in cross-border trade, providing them with easier access to financing and operational support. The platform offers a suite of products including LLC creation, bookkeeping, banking, FX payouts, cargo insurance, and financing tools such as factoring and asset-based lending. Founded in 2020 by Jacob Shoihet and Peter D. Spradling, Marco is headquartered in Miami with additional offices in New York City and Montevideo, Uruguay. The company employs over 50 people across its offices. Marco has established itself as a key player in the trade finance sector serving historically underserved SMEs. It intends to use the funds from this round to further enhance its ESG efforts within the LatAm region. Marco provides a tech-enabled trade financing platform that acts as an operating system for SMEs engaged in trade across LatAm and the U.S. The company was founded in 2020 by Peter D. Spradling (COO) and Jacob Shoihet (CEO) and is based in Miami with offices in Montevideo and New York. Marco intends to use the funds to expand its trade finance platform and suite of trade services across target segments in the U.S. and Latin America, including Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru. The company reported rapid growth: it lent $100M last year, has financed over $254M with zero losses since inception, and saw 1,500%+ CAGR in funding between 2021 and 2022. Marco aims to fund $750M by the end of 2023. Marco Financial offers a tech-enabled risk assessment and factoring platform to provide working capital to small and medium exporters across Latin America. Its product underwrites lines of credit based on future potential and customer-provided data, shortening loan origination from over two months to about one week and enabling funding within 24 hours. Since launching its product in January 2020, Marco has processed thousands of invoices across 20 countries totaling more than $18 million and now lends as little as $25,000 per month up to $10 million. The company aims to simplify cross-border payments, improve risk assessment by productizing unstructured data, and enable large logistics providers to originate export financing. Marco was founded in 2019 and is based in Miami with offices in New York, Dallas and across Latin America. The company also announced senior hires including Prajwal Manalwar as chief product officer and named Sabrina Teichman chief growth officer (editor's note: as of September 2021, Sabrina Teichman no longer works for Marco Financial). Marco Financial is a tech-enabled financing platform that provides financing to small and medium-sized Latin American exporters selling to U.S. buyers. The company uses an innovative due diligence process that leverages real-time data to dynamically assess risk and mitigate capital loss. Marco intends to use the new capital to continue expanding operations and its business reach across the region. The company was founded in 2019 by Peter D. Spradling and Jacob Shoihet and is headquartered in Miami, FL, with offices in New York and across Latin America. The financing package includes both an equity component and a credit facility, indicating a mix of growth capital and lending capacity to support originations.

Led · Debt Financing · Jan 2022

Forge Biologics is a hybrid gene therapy CDMO and clinical-stage therapeutics developer focused on AAV viral vector manufacturing. It operates a 200,000 square foot cGMP facility in Columbus, Ohio called the Hearth with 20 cGMP suites and operational 50L, 500L, 1,000L and 5,000L bioreactors. The company provides end-to-end manufacturing services to scale gene therapy programs from research through clinical and commercial manufacturing. Recent technology milestones include scaling a proprietary HEK 293 suspension platform from 50L to 1,000L and integrating single-use chromatography and automated fill-finish. Forge has expanded hiring for key technical roles and formed a Scientific and Manufacturing Advisory Board to advise on manufacturing offerings and pipeline development. The company plans to use new funds to expand client offerings, proprietary technologies, manufacturing systems, cell lines, and additional services to bolster its end-to-end manufacturing platform. Forge Biologics is a hybrid gene therapy CDMO and clinical-stage therapeutics development company focused on AAV vector manufacturing. The company operates The Hearth, a custom-designed cGMP facility in Columbus, Ohio, and is expanding its footprint to over 200,000 square feet with 20 cGMP manufacturing suites. Planned upgrades include installation of 5,000L cGMP bioreactors and automated cGMP fill-finish capabilities, designed to meet EMA cleanroom requirements and support late-stage clinical and commercial needs. Forge will deploy its proprietary suspension HEK 293 Ignition cell line at larger bioreactor scale and expects the 5,000L bioreactors and automated filling systems to be available in the second half of 2022. The company is accelerating hiring toward roughly 400 employees, aided by a grant from the State of Ohio. Financially, Forge has continued investment support to enable the expansion and new client offerings. Forge Biologics is a hybrid gene therapy contract development and therapeutic development company focused on AAV viral vector manufacturing. It operates a 175,000 square foot cGMP facility in Columbus, Ohio called "The Hearth," dedicated to end-to-end AAV production from research and toxicology grade through clinical and commercial stages. Forge offers end-to-end manufacturing services to accelerate gene therapy programs from preclinical through clinical and commercial manufacturing. The company also operates subsidiaries advancing a proprietary pipeline, including its lead program FBX-101, a first-in-human AAV therapy for Krabbe disease delivering a functioning GALC gene. Forge will use the Series B proceeds to accelerate expansion of its AAV manufacturing CDMO capabilities with additional cGMP production capacity and to support its subsidiaries advancing novel AAV programs. The company frames its work as a patients-first approach aimed at addressing industry-wide AAV manufacturing capacity shortages. Forge Biologics operates a state-of-the-art, 175,000 ft2 facility (The Hearth) dedicated to AAV viral vector production and offers end-to-end CDMO capabilities from preclinical through clinical and commercial manufacturing. The facility currently supports up to 50L research and toxicology grade AAV manufacturing and is being expanded to provide cGMP AAV production at 500L scale by mid-2021. Forge combines AAV manufacturing capacity with an internal pipeline of proprietary AAV-based therapeutics, including a lead program using a combined AAV and umbilical cord blood transplant approach for infantile Krabbe disease. The company appointed Maria Escolar, M.D., a University of Pittsburgh rare disease and clinical gene therapy expert, as Chief Medical Officer and she holds equity in Forge. Forge closed a $40 million Series A financing to fund manufacturing expansion and pipeline development. The management team includes gene therapy veterans with prior roles at Abeona Therapeutics, Nationwide Children’s Hospital gene therapy manufacturing, and Myonexus Therapeutics.

Participated · Debt Financing · Nov 2021

UPSTACK is a profitable, fast-growing platform that transforms how businesses source and architect cloud and internet infrastructure solutions. It combines leading cloud and internet infrastructure advisors with proprietary software and support resources to architect customized solutions across services including colocation and data center, network connectivity, SD‑WAN, unified communications, cloud contact center, public and private cloud, security, mobile, business continuity and IoT. Since its founding in 2017 in New York, UPSTACK has completed more than 1,000 data center, connectivity and cloud-based projects and has acquired 13 independent agencies to become the largest and fastest-growing agency in the technology industry. The company intends to continue investing in category-leading telecom, cloud and connectivity firms. UPSTACK says it will use new financing to scale and expand its platform and to strengthen its balance sheet. Berkshire Partners remains UPSTACK’s lead investor and active partner, providing sector expertise and capital markets support. Upstack provides a platform used by system integrators, advisors and end users to design and compare pricing for private, public and hybrid cloud, data center, network connectivity, business continuity and mobile services. The company pairs that technology with about 15 advisors who offer consulting and procurement guidance; customers can pay consulting fees or Upstack can receive commissions from suppliers. Upstack serves large enterprises, government organizations and smaller businesses and names customers including Cisco, Accenture, Backblaze, Riverbed and Lumen. It reports being profitable and says it has helped complete over 3,700 IT projects across 1,000 engagements to date. The company plans to add more categories such as unified communications and security and to continue expanding its services business and advisor team. UpStack is a New York City-based colocation procurement platform provider founded in 2016 by CEO Christopher Trapp. The company has launched a global colocation procurement platform that enables IT professionals, systems integrators and consultants to discover, price and procure colocation solutions worldwide. UpStack counted more than 60 customers prior to launch and had been beta testing with hyperscale companies as well as technology startups. The company secured $1.8M in seed funding from Burch Creative Capital and Montage Ventures. It is using the funds to continue to develop and launch the platform. The announcement was reported on October 18, 2017.

Participated · Series D · Sep 2019

Sight Sciences closed an over $30M Series E Preferred Stock financing led by D1 Capital Partners. The company said it will use the funds for continued clinical and operational development and to support commercial expansion for its OMNI and TearCare products. Founded in 2011 by CEO Paul Badawi, Sight Sciences is based in Menlo Park, CA. Its OMNI Surgical System is a dually-indicated device that facilitates both trabeculotomy and transluminal viscoelastic delivery, allowing surgeons to target trabecular meshwork, Schlemm’s canal, and collector channels with a single corneal incision. TearCare is a software-controlled, wearable eyelid technology that delivers targeted, adjustable heat to the meibomian glands, leveraging SmartLid technology to facilitate natural meibum expression. Sight Sciences develops surgical and non-surgical medical devices to treat glaucoma and dry eye disease. Its surgical portfolio is led by the OMNI Surgical System, a multi-modal device that enables trabeculotomy and transluminal viscoelastic delivery to target all sources of resistance in the conventional outflow pathway. The non-surgical portfolio is anchored by TearCare, a software-controlled wearable eyelid system that delivers targeted, adjustable heat to the meibomian glands using SmartLid technology to facilitate natural meibum expression. The company plans to accelerate U.S. adoption of OMNI and TearCare, build a global commercial infrastructure in select international markets, and conduct additional clinical trials across its product portfolio. Sight Sciences also intends to develop a pipeline of innovations in new ophthalmic categories. Financially, it secured $56M in total 2019 financing—comprising a $31M Series D and a prior $25M debt facility—to fund these initiatives. Sight Sciences is a commercial-stage ophthalmic medical device company that develops technology-driven surgical and non-surgical solutions for ophthalmic diseases. The company operates two business lines: surgical devices (including TRAB®360 and VISCO360® and another surgical device in advanced development) and non-surgical technologies for dry eye disease. VISCO360® and TRAB®360 are commercially available in the United States, Europe and Canada; VISCO360® is available in the U.S. as a manual surgical tool and is investigational for IOP reduction in adult, pseudophakic patients with primary open angle glaucoma. Leadership includes President and CEO Paul Badawi and newly appointed Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing Shawn O’Neil. Sight Sciences plans to use new funding to build out its U.S. commercial team, launch ophthalmic devices in Dry Eye and Microinvasive Surgery, scale manufacturing, and complete clinical studies to pursue expanded product indications and strategic product positioning. Sight Sciences is a commercial-stage ophthalmic medical device company based in Menlo Park, CA, led by President and CEO Paul Badawi. It operates both surgical and non-surgical device business lines. The surgical portfolio includes the TRAB™360 and VISCO™360 devices. The non-surgical portfolio comprises technologies in advanced stages of development for evaporative dry eye. The company closed a $7M Series B financing to support growth. It intends to use the proceeds to build out the management team, scale manufacturing, support product development, and initiate a series of clinical studies.