The flotation is likely to value the company at more than $600m.
Allied Minds, a Boston-based specialist in commercialising university research, intends to float on the London Stock Exchange. The American company is looking at a London initial public offering (IPO) as the vast majority of its shareholders are in the UK.
Allied Minds hopes to raise $140m through the offering, which it will use to further develop the 18 portfolio businesses it has already backed. It will also invest in five to 10 new companies a year, doubling its portfolio over the next couple of years.
The company currently has partnerships with 33 US universities and 26 US federal government institutions. The Pentagon and Homeland Security both grant Allied Minds a first option on commercialising new technologies being developed.
Its portfolio companies range in focus from curing prostate cancer to tinnitus to cybersecurity. Among them is Spin Transfer Technologies, a memory chip company spun out of New York University. The company, still two years from commercialisation, is looking at entering cybersecurity– an increasingly lucrative market following high-profile thefts of millions of eBay account details and 70,000 Target customer details.
Allied Minds’s US-focus gives it a unique selling point over similar London-listed groups such as Imperial Innovation, the technology transfer office of Imperial College London, and IP Group, which has partnerships with UK universities such as Oxford and Manchester.
Chris Silva, chief executive, said: “We see over 2,000 pieces of technology a year. We try to find the most transformative technologies that are available in our pipeline.”
