Offering much needed relief for Woodford-associated funds, sequencing unicorn Oxford Nanopore raises $105.9M in new cash

▤ Summary

In­vestors in Ox­ford Nanopore Tech­nolo­gies — in­clud­ing Neil Wood­ford’s for­mer fund — has man­aged to re­coup some cash as the gene se­quenc­ing de­vice mak­er clos­es its lat­est round and, in the process, boosts its uni­corn val­u­a­tion. The com­pa­ny said it’s brought in $38.6 mil­lion (£29.3 mil­lion) in new cap­i­tal and helped some back­ers find new firms to take their stake, lead­ing to a sec­ondary sale to­tal­ing $105.9 mil­lion (£80.2 mil­lion). Among the ex­ist­ing in­vestors who of­floaded parts of their hold­ings is the IP Group, once Wood­ford’s dar­ling, and the Eq­ui­ty In­come Fund that’s in the process of be­ing liq­ui­dat­ed af­ter fir­ing Wood­ford as the man­ag­er. But dis­count­ed or not, any cash in­jec­tion is count­ed as a win for the in­vestors whose mon­ey have been trapped since last June, when Wood­ford abrupt­ly froze his flag­ship Eq­ui­ty In­come Fund. Spun out of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford, Nanopore boasts “scal­able” DNA and RNA se­quenc­ing tech that can range from bench-top de­vices to pock­et-sized ma­chines.

$ Funding

▦ Linked Companies

Oxford Nanopore Technologies plc

$50M to $100M