Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.
Symetrica, a UK-based producer of radiation detection technologies for military and homeland security applications spun out of Southampton University, has closed a £4m ($5.3m) round led by Parkwalk Advisors, the fund management arm of commercialisation firm IP Group, UKTN reported yesterday. Unnamed existing investors and members of Symetrica’s management team contributed to the round, which includes provision for an additional $2.6m from an undisclosed defence and security investor. Symetrica will use the funding to grow international sales of its product offering, which includes drive-through, vehicle-mounted and handheld radiation detectors. The spinout has now raised £14m ($18.4m at current exchange rates) altogether since being founded in 2002.
Quandela, a France-based spinout of research institute CNRS developing photonic technology for building information bits in quantum computers, has secured €1.5m ($1.8m) in a seed round led by Quantonation that included $593,000 in convertible bonds from Bpifrance’s French Tech Seed unit. Founded in 2017, Quandela aims to devise photonic qubit emitters using single photons in order to facilitate optical quantum computers and, longer-term, secure technology for their communications. The funding is intended to accelerate Quandela’s commercialisation path.
InHealth Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of preventative and diagnostic healthcare services provider InHealth, has backed a $1.7m seed round for Transformative, a US-based developer of software that aims to predict sudden cardiac arrest. The round was led by Tera Ventures and also included charity Wellcome Trust. Andrus Oks of Tera Ventures and Nick Slater of AI Seed will join Transformative’s board. The company’s co-founders include Marek Sirendi, a former PhD candidate at University of Cambridge and researcher at Cern, and Marek Reid, a machine learning research at Imperial College London.
Additive Assurance, an Australia-based supplier of additive manufacturing components spun out of Monash University, has completed a $1.6m round led by commercialisation firm IP Group. Founded in 2019, Additive Assurance has devised a 3D printing technology for producing metal manufacturing parts and correcting any anomalies as they occur. The funding will go toward a recruitment drive in the hope of growing Additive Assurance’s business following the fulfilment of its first contract, on behalf of the Australian Department of Defence. Jürgen Schneider, former head of market development for appliance and industrial product maker Siemens, has been appointed as non-executive director at Additive Assurance.
Humanloop, a UK-based artificial intelligence model training technology spinout of University College London (UCL), secured an undisclosed sum on Wednesday from university venture vehicle UCL Technology Fund. The company is working on software to train AI models with less data but better accuracy. Humanloop’s co-founders include David Barber, professor of machine learning and director at UCL’s AI centre, along with PhD students Raza Habib and Peter Hayes.
