Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.

Picus Security, a US-based cybersecurity technology producer co-founded by faculty from Middle East Technical University, has closed a $24m series B round led by Turkven, with participation from Earlybird Venture Capital and private investors Nathan Dornbrook. Picus has now raised $33m altogether, it said. Earlybird led a $5m series A round in October 2019, following an earlier $1.7m round led by ACT-VC, the company revealed at the time of the series A announcement. ScaleX Ventures led a round of undisclosed size in June 2018, when Social Capital, ACT-VC and angel investors also contributed. Leucid Bio, a US-based developer of cell therapies for hard-to-treat cancers based on research at King’s College London, picked up £11.5m ($15.7m) today in a series A round led by Epidarex. The round also included Vulpes Investment Management, 2Invest, the British Business Bank’s Future Fund and Sofinnova Partners. The latter was identified as a returning investor, and regulatory documents show Sofinnova appointed a representative to Leucid Bio’s board in June 2017. Leucid Bio had raised $4.2m as of June 2020, according to its company accounts. Zoba, a US-based fleet optimisation software developer spun out of Harvard University, completed a $12m series A round yesterday that was led by NTTVC, a corporate venturing subsidiary of telecommunications group NTT. VC firm CRV also participated in the round having led a $3m seed round for Zoba in February 2019 that included Founder Collective and angel investor Mark Cuban. Fay Hazaveh Costa, a partner at NTTVC, is taking a seat on Zoba’s board of directors in connection with the latest round. SMBX, a US-based financial marketplace helping small businesses raise capital, completed an $11.5m seed round yesterday backed by University of California (UC), Berkeley’s incubator Berkeley SkyDeck. The round was led by Group 11 and included Better Ventures, Impact America Fund (IAF), Unpopular Ventures, Paul Heller and Jim Norris. The latter five, together with Berkeley SkyDeck, were identified as returning shareholders and the company has now raised $15m altogether. It previously disclosed $2.5m in seed financing in August 2020 led by Better Ventures, with participation from IAF, Unpopular Ventures and unnamed others. Crossing Minds, a US-based business recommendation service spun out of Stanford University, has secured $10m in a series A round led by Radical Ventures that included Index Ventures, Partech and Lerer Hippeau. The spinout has not revealed details of earlier funding but named Index Ventures as an existing backer and lists Stanford-StartX, marketing technology group You & Mr Jones…

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Thierry Heles

Thierry Heles is the editor of Global University Venturing, host of the Beyond the Breakthrough interview podcast and responsible for the monthly GUV Gazette (sign up here for free).