Venture capital firm Amadeus Capital Partners has paid $24m to acquire shares in Oxford Nanopore, a UK-based DNA sequencing technology developer backed by corporates Amgen and Illumina, in a secondary transaction.
The deal valued Oxford Nanopore at roughly $2.4bn, according to the Telegraph, which said Amadeus had bought into the spinout this way after missing out on a previous round.
Spun out of University of Oxford in 2005, Oxford Nanopore is working on a genetic sequencing-derived analysis technology that can be applied to any living organisms. Its lead product, MinIon, is a nanopore DNA sequencing tool for fields including education, scientific research, pathogen control, environmental monitoring and food chain quality management.
The company most recently raised $108m in October 2020 from pension fund manager RPMI Railpen and new and returning backers including diversified holding group International Holdings Company, which lifted the overall funding to approximately $800m.
Oxford Nanopore previously closed a $98.1m round in May 2020 across two tranches featuring undisclosed investors, with the Telegraph identifying internet group Tencent as a participant.
Pharmaceutical firm Amgen, genomics technology provider Illumina, financial services firm China Construction Bank and commercialisation firm IP Group, are also among the company’s shareholders, as are GIC, GT Healthcare, Hostplus, Invesco Perpetual, Lansdowne Partners, Odey Asset Management and Top Technology Ventures.
– The original version of this article appeared on our sister site, Global University Venturing.
