• 23andMe

  Participated · Equity · Sep 2017

  23andMe, Inc. announced it expects to receive $250 million in funding from Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, Altimeter Capital Management, LP, Casdin Capital, LLC, Foresite Capital Management, LLC, and other investors. The company entered into a subscription agreement to issue 25,000,000 Class A common shares at an issue price of $10 per share for gross proceeds of $250,000,000 on February 4, 2021. The transaction includes participation from Foresite Capital Management, LLC, and purchases by Anne Wojcicki of 2,500,000 shares for gross proceeds of $25,000,000 and Richard Branson of 2,500,000 shares for gross proceeds of $25,000,000. Returning investors include funds managed by Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, Altimeter Capital Management, LP, and Casdin Capital, LLC. Investors will acquire a 6% stake in the company at a post-money valuation of $3,463,000,000. The transaction is expected to close on the date of and immediately prior to the consummation of a merger transaction, which is expected to close in the second calendar quarter of 2021. 23andMe provides at-home consumer DNA testing and also conducts research and drug-discovery work. The company runs studies — including a COVID-19 study launched earlier in the year to identify genetic differences in patients with severe symptoms — and shares de-identified individual-level genetic data and survey responses with researchers. More than one million people have participated in its research, including roughly 15,000 who tested positive for COVID-19 and about 1,100 who required hospitalization. Demand for at-home DNA testing slowed in 2020, and in January the company announced planned layoffs of 100 employees, about 14% of its workforce. Financially, 23andMe closed 2020 with $82.5 million in new funding reported in an SEC filing, described as an extension of its prior $250 million Series F. The company remains focused on consumer testing, research and drug discovery. 23andMe offers personal genetic profiling to consumers and an opt-in research platform that aggregates genetic and phenotypic data. Founded in 2006 and led by CEO Anne Wojcicki, the company is based in Mountain View, California and has amassed a database of over 5 million customers. In July 2018 23andMe received a $300M equity investment from GSK. The company and GSK also announced an exclusive four-year collaboration to focus on research and development of new medicines using human genetics as the basis for discovery. The partnership will combine 23andMe’s large-scale genetic resources and data-science capabilities with GSK’s scientific, medical, and commercialization expertise. The stated goal is to gather insights, discover novel drug targets driving disease progression, and develop therapies for serious unmet medical needs. 23andMe, founded in 2006, is a direct-to-consumer genetics testing company that sells saliva kits and returns ancestry and health information. It has convinced "millions of customers" to pay for its tests and operates a crowdsourced research business where opt-in customers participate in studies linking DNA to conditions such as melanoma and schizophrenia. The company has developed an expanding therapeutics group alongside its research platform. The announcement says the new capital will be used to accelerate customer growth, continue funding its expanding therapeutics group, and invest in its crowdsourced genetic research platform. Prior to this round the company had raised $491 million to date. Competitors mentioned in the article include Ancestry.com and Color Genomics. 23andMe is a Mountain View, CA–based personal genetics company that allows people to access, understand and benefit from the human genome. It operates a consumer genetic-testing and research platform built on data from more than one million customers who have consented to participate in research. The company uses its customer data for health research and partners with external researchers by sharing de-identified datasets. Under a $1.7M grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute, 23andMe will create an African American sequencing panel to serve as a reference dataset for health research. The de-identified panel will be made available to researchers worldwide to improve understanding of diseases in minority populations. Earlier in April the company received a separate NIH grant to apply admixture mapping to improve detection of disease-causing variants among people of African, Latino and Asian ancestry.

• Affectiva

  Participated · Series C · Aug 2012

  Affectiva is a pioneer of Emotion AI and a developer of Human Perception AI that leverages deep learning, computer vision, speech science and large real-world datasets to detect nuanced emotions, complex cognitive states, activities, interactions and objects. An MIT Media Lab spin-off, the company supplies Automotive AI solutions to OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers, ridesharing providers, fleet managers and autonomous-vehicle developers to understand drivers' and passengers' states and moods. Its technology is also used by 25 percent of the Fortune Global 500 to test consumer engagement with ads, videos and TV programming. The company plans to use new funding to deploy Human Perception AI in production vehicles and expand in conversational interfaces, social robotics and market research. Leadership emphasizes creating safer, more comfortable in-vehicle experiences through attention management and predictive analytics integrated with vehicle computing platforms. Financially, Affectiva closed a $26 million funding round that brings total invested capital to $53 million. Affectiva develops emotion recognition technology that enables developers to create hyper-personalized experiences across industries such as gaming, advertising, healthcare and automotive. Its solutions allow adaptive games that change based on a player’s mood, clinical research applications that respond to a patient’s emotional state, and video communication platforms that optimize presentations based on audience engagement. An MIT Media Lab spin-off, the company provides its solutions to more than 1,400 brands to gather insight and analytics in consumer emotional engagement. The company raised $14M in venture capital and intends to use the funds to hire new people, continue innovating in Emotion AI, and accelerate growth into global markets. Leadership changes announced alongside the round include Nick Langeveld named Chairman of the Board and Dr. Rana el Kaliouby moving into the role of Chief Executive Officer. Founded in 2009 by Rosalind W. Picard and Rana el Kaliouby out of the MIT Media Lab, Affectiva develops facial-tracking technology to measure human emotional responses. Its core product, Affdex, is used to test and optimize ad effectiveness and is deployed by clients including WPP's Millward Brown. The company also produces a Q Sensor wearable biometric device, used by “hundreds” of universities and corporations. Affectiva is building a large repository of facial-response data from users in more than 20 countries to help content creators understand cultural differences in reactions. The company plans to use its new funding to move Affdex beyond advertising into consumer-facing applications, social environments, and games. Financially, the company has raised $12M in the announced Series C and has total funding of $20.2M alongside grants from the National Science Foundation; Mary Meeker and Frank Meehan joined its advisory/board ranks as part of the financing. Affectiva spun out of MIT’s Media Lab and builds emotion-measurement technology for ad and brand testing. Its core product, Affdex, uses webcams to track viewers’ responses to videos and can recognize complex emotions such as confusion. The company also offers a wireless biosensor called the Q Sensor. Affectiva says Affdex has been used to crowdsource readers’ responses at Forbes.com and to test Super Bowl campaigns with research agency Millward Brown. It will use a $500,000 NSF grant to continue developing Affdex and to build an "emotional norms database" to benchmark ad engagement and cross-country responses. The startup has raised venture funding, most recently a $5.7M Series B, and says its technology could eventually expand beyond ad testing to help people with autism understand facial expressions. Affectiva is a Waltham, MA company founded in 2009 by MIT scientists Rosalind W. Picard and Rana el Kaliouby and led by CEO Dave Berman. The company develops the Affdex software, which reads emotional states such as liking and attention from facial expressions using a webcam and employs computer vision, machine learning and patented methods to interpret non-verbal responses at scale. It also develops the Q Sensor, a wearable biometric sensor used by more than 100 universities and corporations to track excitement, engagement, stress and anxiety. Affectiva intends to use new funding to expand development and marketing of Affdex and to advance the Q wearable. The company positions its technology to help understand how people feel in order to improve products and experiences.

No current team members are available.