International Transactions

CRO giant WuXi AppTech of China to raise $900M in IPO

The company was a listed on NYSE until 2015 when it opted for a go-private transaction for $3.3B. Now the company has received fast track approval to list on Shanghai Exchange. WuXi AppTech has 14,000 employees at 26 facilities. Revenue is close to $900M. Chinese authorities are rapidly approving public listing of many genomics and AI companies as they fear losing emerging technologies to Hong Kong and New York stock exchanges.

UK-based BenevolentAI bags $115M to push ahead on its AI-enabled R&D

AI-driven drug development is gaining significant traction. We have written about limitation of chemistry. The trend is certainly pointing to the marriage of AI and chemistry to accelerate the rate of development and increasing precision in discovery.

The company has raised $200M to date at the valuation of $2.0B. The technology analyzes the immense material and literature to generate insights into how to treat diseases. BenevolentAI is enrolling patients in phase 2 trial of Parkinson’s disease. The additional funding will also be earmarked for other diseases.

The American unit of India-based HCL acquires C3i Solutions from Merck for $60M

The target is a multi-channel customer engagement services company for the life science industries. Healthcare is becoming increasingly important for global IT services firms such as HCL.

C3i has been in business for over 30 years.

Aexis Medical BVBA, based in Belgium, is acquired by Cantel Medical of the U.S. for $25M

The target develops software solutions for tracking and monitoring of instrument reprocessing workflows for hospitals. Cantel is a $4.0B market cap company involved in infection prevention and control products for patients, caregivers and providers.

For fiscal year 2017, Aexis reported $4.2M in revenue.

LetsGetChecked based in Ireland and New York, raises $12M for at home lab tests

This is the first round of funding for the company which is developing its end to end at home lab test business. Optum Ventures led the round and Chinese VC firm Qiming Ventures also contributed. Patients can collect blood samples usually a pinprick and send it to their lab. The lab then sends the result to the physician who can decide if the patient needs to be contacted. Once that is determined, the results appear on a dashboard in the patient’s app. Telemedicine integration is next in line.

Sleep company, SleepScore Labs, acquires Netherlands-based Sleep.ai

This is likely one of several consolidations that we will hear about in the sleep sector. We believe that there is a good deal of overinvestment in the sector and consolidations is one way to tease out the excess. The glucose monitoring and diabetes management sector is next in line.  SleepScore makes a bedside sleep monitor which is designed to measure a number of different sleep-affecting variables including respiration, body movement, duration and temperature/light. SleepScore competes with Beddit acquired by Apple last May.

Swiss-based Abionic raises $21M to address rapid diagnostics for Sepsis

Censors are allowing us to rapidly diagnose numerous diseases with just one drop of blood. The company already has other diagnostic products for iron deficiency and respiratory allergies. Asthma and CRP are next.

Canadian-based Swift Medical, a digital wound care company, lands $11.6M in Series A

Data Collective led the round. The technology captures wound care information by waving the smartphone above the injured site in a wand-like fashion. The platform then analyzes the wound by using proprietary machine vision algos. Subsequently,  the info is sent to the EMR. Over 1,000 health facilities managing 100,000 beds across North America use the technology at the patients’ bedside.