Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.
Pulsify Medical, a Belgium-based medical technology spinout of Imec and KU Leuven, obtained €2.6m ($2.9m) in seed funding on Saturday co-led by Imec.xpand, the research institute’s investment fund, and KU Leuven, with participation from University Hospitals Leuven. Pulsify, founded in June 2019 as Carpatchiot, is developing wearable ultrasound patches exploiting flexible ultrasound transducer technology created at Imec and cardiac ultrasound imaging technology based on KU Leuven research.
Sofant Technologies, a UK-based smart antenna technology producer spun out of University of Edinburgh, today received £1.8m ($2.3m) in funding from investors led by Kelvin Capital, with participation from EMV Capital and unnamed, existing shareholders. Sofant is developing smart antennae for wireless network equipment that are inexpensive but offer high performance while requiring only little amounts of power. The money will allow Sofant to complete the commercialisation of its technology. Ilian Iliev, managing director of EMV Capital, will join the board of directors. The spinout previously raised $1.1m in funding in January 2018.
Phitonex, a US-based developer of medical diagnostics technology based on research at Duke University, has closed a $2m funding round, according to WRAL TechWire. Investors in the round were not identified. Phitonex is working on fluorescent labels and instrumentation to boost the number of molecular biomarkers that can be observed at the same time five- to tenfold. Disease diagnosis is currently limited by the brightness and colour range that traditional labels have been able to achieve, limiting the ability to detect biomarkers. Phitonex’s labels can be used on existing hardware, while the spinout is also working on its own instruments. The funding will enable Phitonex to bring its labels to market and to expand and accelerate the development of its instruments.
Wisdom Academy, a Japan-based school operator, raised ¥147m ($1.4m) on Friday from Tokyo University of Science (TUS) Innovation Capital and TUS Investment Management’s fund TUS Capital. An unspecified fund underwritten by education management services provider Kids Learning Network also contributed capital, which will go towards increasing headcount and improving Wisdom’s technology.