Led · Seed · Aug 2023

Solu Therapeutics is a biotechnology company pioneering therapies that eliminate disease-driving cells across cancer, immunology, and other therapeutic areas using proprietary CyTAC and TicTAC platforms. Its lead candidate, STX-0712, is a CyTAC designed to target CCR2 and selectively eliminate CCR2-positive malignant monocytes, with an initial focus on CMML and other hematologic malignancies. The company has initiated a first-in-human, open-label, multicenter Phase 1 trial of STX-0712 with a two-part design: Part A dose escalation to determine the maximum tolerated dose and/or minimum effective dose in resistant/refractory CMML, and Part B to evaluate safety, tolerability, recommended Phase 2 dose, and preliminary antitumor activity. Solu presented preclinical ex vivo data at the 2024 ASH Annual Meeting showing robust activity of STX-0712 against CCR2-positive monocytes from CMML patient samples. Proceeds from the recent financing will be used to complete dose escalation and expansion of STX-0712, generate new development candidates including a first-in-class mast cell depletor for immunological diseases, advance additional discovery programs, and explore new applications for the CyTAC and TicTAC platforms. The company was cofounded by Longwood Fund and is based in Boston. Solu Therapeutics is developing therapeutics to eliminate disease-driving cells in cancer, immunology, and autoimmunity using its proprietary CyTaC (Cytotoxicity Targeting Chimera) platform. CyTaC molecules, licensed from GSK, aim to unlock antibody-intractable cell surface targets and combine the potency of biologics with the broad target binding of small molecules. Characteristics of the platform include unlocking new tumor-associated antigens to eliminate cancer cells, depleting pathogenic immune cells, and extending the half-life of small-molecule antagonists and agonists. The company intends to use the financing to develop the proprietary CyTaC platform and associated drug candidates in-licensed from GSK. Under the license, GSK received equity in Solu and will receive milestones and royalties on products derived from the CyTaC platform. Solu is led by co-founder and CEO David Donabedian, Ph.D., and is based in Boston, MA.

Participated · Series B · Jan 2022

Xage Security provides zero trust security products and services that secure, manage, and transform digital operations across operational technology (OT), information technology (IT), and cloud environments. Its product suite includes identity-based access management, remote access, and zero trust data exchange, all powered by the Xage Fabric, alongside professional cybersecurity design, implementation, and support services. Xage’s Cybersecurity Mesh is designed to bring zero trust access management and data security to complex environments without overhauling existing physical or digital infrastructure. The company serves critical infrastructure sectors including energy, manufacturing, healthcare, and government. Xage plans to use the new funds to further R&D investments and expand go-to-market operations, and is pursuing global expansion including a new Singapore office to support APAC customers after recent Middle East expansion. The company is based in Palo Alto, California. Xage is a zero trust cybersecurity company whose core product is the Xage Fabric. The Xage Fabric accelerates and simplifies the way enterprises secure, manage and transform digital operations across OT, IT, and cloud. Xage solutions include Identity & Access Management (IAM), remote access, and dynamic data security, all powered by the Xage Fabric. The company announced investment from Chevron Technology Ventures to further accelerate the use of zero trust in protecting energy and other critical infrastructure. The additional capital extends Xage's Series B venture capital financing for a second time in the last two months, bringing total financing to-date to $62M. Xage is based in Palo Alto, CA. Xage provides a patented Xage Fabric that brings a zero-trust security model across operational technology (OT), IT, and cloud environments, offering identity & access management, remote access, and dynamic data security. The Fabric overlays machines, applications, and data points to impose granular control and block attacks in real-world operations. Customers in energy, defense, utilities, manufacturing, and logistics have more than doubled in the past year, and two-thirds are accelerating rollouts to meet TSA and other government mandates. Customers include top five energy companies globally and top five U.S. pipeline operators. Partners have increased 16x, and the company expects bookings to grow 7x in 2022. Xage announced a $6M Series B top-up and will use the funds to expand go-to-market operations to meet growing demand from critical infrastructure organizations globally. Xage builds a software "fabric" — a mesh of nodes that overlays industrial operations to provide granular control of digital interactions and zero-trust protection spanning operations, IT and the cloud. The solution leverages a distributed ledger/blockchain organized in nodes to avoid single points of failure and limit the impact of attacks. It targets older, brittle industrial infrastructure including oil and gas pipelines, water supplies and electrical grids. The company says demand has risen amid increasing ransomware attacks, government regulation and incidents such as last year’s Florida water supply attack. To support rollouts and deployments Xage is hiring aggressively: it had over 40 employees at the time of the article and expected to be close to 90 by the end of 2022, and plans a hybrid work approach. Financially, Xage announced a $30 million Series B and has raised $54 million in total to date. Xage Security provides a blockchain-protected security platform for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) that distributes authentication and private data across device networks. The platform enables any-to-any communication, secures access to existing industrial systems, and supports continuous edge-computing operations despite irregular connectivity. Its architecture is designed to strengthen as more devices join the network. Customers include leaders across energy, utilities, transportation, and manufacturing. The company is led by CEO Duncan Greatwood and recently added Norman Thorlakson as SVP of Sales and Business Development to expand its customer portfolio. Funding announced will support continued growth and deployment of distributed IIoT across energy, renewables, water, wind, and other sectors.

Led · Series A · Jun 2021

RapidPulse is developing a pulsed (cyclic) aspiration platform and a range of catheter sizes intended to improve clot engagement, removal efficiency and procedural consistency during mechanical thrombectomy for acute ischemic stroke. The company’s system is being evaluated in the TURBO investigational device exemption study, conducted in the United States and Europe to support its U.S. regulatory pathway. RapidPulse plans to expand clinical experience with its system across leading stroke centers as part of that program and may pursue FDA approval if clinical data support a submission. The platform strategy includes continued development of the catheter portfolio and broader clinical use to gather performance data across different patients, clot types and treatment settings. RapidPulse was spun out of medical device incubator Syntheon and is headquartered in Miami. Financially, the company recently raised an oversubscribed $48 million Series B co-led by Medtronic, TechWald Next and S3 Ventures, with additional participation from SBI Investment Company, the Florida Opportunity Fund, and existing investors.

Participated · Equity · May 2021

ThetaRay is an Israeli startup that offers an AI-based AML platform branded Sonar, which automatically scans and flags illicit transaction activity across a range of financial flows. Its product is applied to multiple contexts including correspondence banking to detect complex laundering schemes. Named customers include Santander Bank and Travelex, alongside other large corporates and fintech startups. The company has seen rapid commercial growth: its customer base grew ten-fold in the last year and annual recurring revenue grew five-fold. ThetaRay plans to continue scaling in fintech and corporate payments and has said it intends to pursue a public listing when market conditions are more amenable. It has raised around $160 million to date and is using the latest funding to extend runway and scale the business. ThetaRay Ltd. disclosed a $31 million financing round announced May 18, 2021. The round was co-led by new investor Benhamou Global Ventures LLC and existing investor Jerusalem Venture Partners. Additional participation came from new investor Saints Capital Services, LLC, existing investor OurCrowd Ltd., Bank Hapoalim B.M., and other investors. Benhamou Global Ventures LLC and Saints Capital Services, LLC were appointed observers to ThetaRay's board. The company has raised more than $90 million in funding to date. The articles do not provide details on ThetaRay's core product, future plans, or operating metrics. ThetaRay provides machine learning and AI-driven analytics to help financial institutions detect the earliest signs of money laundering and other financial crime. Its technology is based on patented algorithms developed by mathematicians over more than a decade and can detect anomalies in real time. The platform is used to manage risk, detect money-laundering schemes, uncover fraud, expose bad loans, surface operational issues and reveal new growth opportunities. The company completed an over $30m funding round and has raised more than $60m in total to date. ThetaRay intends to use the capital to expand its presence in Europe, Asia and the US, increase its workforce and scale operations. The company is led by CEO Mark Gazit and is based in Hod HaSharon, Israel. ThetaRay develops hyper-dimensional, multi-domain big data analytics to detect subtle, previously hidden signs of cyber threats across multiple data sources. Its technology is designed to protect physical infrastructure, financial contracts and other critical assets by identifying abnormal behavior that indicates attacks. The company traces its core algorithms to seven years of academic research by founders Professors Amir Averbuch and Ronald Coifman. ThetaRay is led by CEO Mark Gazit and a team with deep cybersecurity and big-data experience, including CTO Daphna Steinmetz and VP of product marketing Udi Solomon. The company says it is approximately one year old, with ten years of underlying research, employs about 20 people and expects to double headcount; it has a small but steadily increasing number of customers, including very large organizations. ThetaRay plans geographic expansion (opening a U.S. office) and to move into additional verticals such as telecom and healthcare. ThetaRay is a Jerusalem, Israel-based provider of solutions to protect critical infrastructure. It was founded by Prof. Amir Averbuch of Tel Aviv University and Prof. Ronald Coifman of Yale, and is led by CEO Mark Gazit. The company’s core product detects Zero Day threats and APT attacks, covert hostile operations that customize methods to their mark using malicious code and technical skills that are difficult to detect. ThetaRay’s solutions have been deployed by large commercial entities, government, and homeland security organizations in Israel and around the world. The company received an investment from Poalim Capital Markets; the amount of the transaction was not disclosed. ThetaRay had previously received investments from JVP and GE.

Participated · Series A · Mar 2021

Geneos Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company that uses its GT-EPIC platform to target tumor neoantigens and develop personalized therapeutic cancer vaccines. Its lead program, GT-30, evaluates PTCV (GNOS-PV02 plus plasmid-encoded IL-12) administered with pembrolizumab in patients with unresectable or metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma who progressed on or are intolerant to first-line tyrosine kinase inhibitors. The Phase 1b/2a trial assesses safety, immunogenicity, and efficacy; initial data from the first 24 patients showed three complete responses and four partial responses, prompting expansion to 36 patients. Geneos plans to report efficacy and durability data from the full 36-patient cohort in 2023 and is planning for a potentially registrational trial based on the encouraging results. The company raised $5M in a Series A3 financing and intends to use the proceeds to expand the Phase 1b/2a trial of its personalized vaccine in liver cancer. The Series A3 added 3B Future Health Fund to Geneos' investor syndicate, and 3B's managing director, Dr. Roberto DePonti, will join as a board observer. Geneos is led by CEO Niranjan Sardesai and is based in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. Geneos Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotherapeutics company focused on tumor neoantigen-targeted personalized immunotherapies using its GT-EPIC™ Neoantigen-Targeting Platform. The platform designs and delivers highly optimized synthetic DNA plasmids and combinations tailored to each patient’s unique tumor mutations. Its lead candidate, GNOS-PV02, is a tumor-specific DNA plasmid-based personalized cancer vaccine being evaluated in the GT-30 Phase Ib/IIa trial for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma. In the GT-30 trial GNOS-PV02 is combined with a DNA-encoded cytokine IL-12 (INO-9012) and the PD-1 inhibitor pembrolizumab. The company intends to use new funding to expand the GT-30 trial from 24 to 36 patients, advance the pipeline into a new indication, and support continued operations. Geneos is based in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. Geneos Therapeutics is a clinical-stage company developing personalized immunotherapies that target tumor neoantigens using its GT-EPIC platform. Its lead programs include GT-30, a personalized neoantigen-targeting vaccine in a Phase Ib/IIa trial, and GNOS-PV02 for treating advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The GT-EPIC platform is based on DNA medicines technology exclusively licensed from Inovio Pharmaceuticals. Inovio’s underlying technology has been used in the clinical treatment of over 2,000 patients with more than 6,000 administrations. Geneos recently closed a $12M Series A1 financing to support expansion of its clinical programs. The company expanded its management team with senior hires across clinical, R&D, business development, and finance, and added a Korea Investment Partners executive to its board. Geneos is led by founder and CEO Dr. Niranjan Y. Sardesai and is based in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania. Geneos Therapeutics develops neoantigen-targeting personalized cancer immunotherapies using a platform designed to identify, design, manufacture and deliver tumor-specific therapies. The company was created as a spinout of Inovio Pharmaceuticals and operates under an exclusive license to Inovio's immunotherapy platform. Geneos intends to use its technology to advance personalized cancer treatments toward clinical testing. Proceeds from the Series A will fund the launch of operations as a standalone entity and completion of IND-enabling activities toward first-in-human trials. Concurrent with the financing, co-founder Niranjan Y. Sardesai resigned as Inovio COO to serve full-time as Geneos' CEO. Following the round, Geneos will no longer be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Inovio.