U-M records 22 spinouts

U-M Tech Transfer, the commercialisation office of University of Michigan, formed 22 spinouts during its past financial year, which ended June 30, and set a new record for the institution.
The office has now founded a total of 86 spinouts in the space of five years. It had already set a record last year when it established 21 companies.
The university also signed a record 232 licence and option agreements during its 2019 fiscal year, up from 218 in 2018, and secured 198 US patents, up from 183 during the previous period.
Licensing revenues totaled $16.3m, while its spinouts collected more than $505m in angel and venture capital funding, on top of another $138m from public markets.
Inventions disclosures reached 502, also beating last year’s record of 484 and bringing the total number for the past five years to 2,280.
Companies launched during the financial year spanned a wide range of areas, including software and hardware, the internet of things, medical devices, therapeutics, healthcare IT and materials science.
Spinouts highlighted by the university included Voxel51, a a US-based video data extraction software tool developer that raised $2m in funding led by eLab Ventures in July.
U-M also established its first ever fintech spinout, Equarius Risk Analytics, which uses quantitative analytics to identify the impact of water and weather risks on financial assets.
Kelly Sexton, associate vice-president for research-technology transfer and innovation partnerships, said: “It is a diverse portfolio of startups that reflects the breadth of excellence within U-M’s research enterprise.
“These startups also help to augment, anchor and in some cases create new industries here in southeast Michigan.”