Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.
PD AeroSpace, a Japan-based space technology developer, has added $931,500 in series A funding from diversified conglomerate Sojitz and financial services firm Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank’s OKB Capital unit, to bring the round’s total to $7.7m. The extension followed a $2m second close in December 2018 backed by Tohoku University Venture Partners, the institution’s investment arm, media firm Chubu-Nippon Broadcasting and Innovation Investment. A first $4.8m tranche was raised in May 2018 from air transportation services company ANA Holdings, travel agency HIS, theme park operator Huis Ten Bosch, Optima Ventures and Mizuho Capital, the venture capital arm of financial services Mizuho Bank. HIS and ANA had already injected $430,000 in 2016.
Atlas AI, a US-based agricultural and economic data provider based on Stanford University research, has obtained $7m in a series A round led by Airbus Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of aerospace and defence firm Airbus. The round also included data storage technology producer Micron Technology and Rockefeller Foundation. Founded in 2018, Atlas AI applies artificial intelligence-driven data analytics to high-resolution satellite imagery in order to create agricultural, infrastructure and economic insights for sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Lewis Pinault, partner of Airbus Ventures, has joined the Atlas AI board of directors following the round, with the proceeds going to support Atlas’s product and outreach strategies.
Pic Therapeutics, a US-based Harvard University spinout developing oncogene translation-based cancer medicines, completed a $5m seed round on Wednesday led by Advent Life Sciences. The round was filled out by angel investors. Pic Therapeutics aims to develop drugs that inhibit cancer-causing oncogene proteins by interfering with their RNA encoding, using a mechanism known as the pre-initiation complex. The company’s founding research was led by Gerhard Wagner, a Harvard Medical School professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology.
Living Optics, a UK-based imaging technology spinout of University of Oxford, has secured £3.3m ($4.1m) in a round led by the university’s venturing fund Oxford Sciences Innovation and including Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund, FinSMEs reported yesterday. The funding will go to commercialising Living Optics’ compact camera design with an eye on the consumer products, manufacturing and medical device spaces.
– Additional reporting by Liwen-Edison Fu
