US-headquartered cancer therapy developer Rakuten Medical closed a $166m series D round yesterday featuring e-commerce group Rakuten and financial services firm SBI Holdings.
Venture capital firm General Catalyst led the round, which consisted of $75m in fresh capital and $91m of converted stocks from convertible notes with accrued interest. Unnamed returning investors filled out the participants in the round.
Founded in 2013 and formerly known as Aspyrian Therapeutics, Rakuten Medical is developing precision cellular therapies leveraging its Illuminox platform that are designed to selectively kill cancer cells. It has offices in Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, Taiwan and the United States.
The cash will help the company continue conducting clinical trials for its lead product candidate, ASP-1929, a photoimmunotherapy being developed with the Illuminox platform. It had raised approximately $790,000 from undisclosed investors in July 2020, according to a securities filing.
Rakuten had already supplied $100m in series C1 financing for Rakuten Medical in August 2019, which came after a $284m series C round completed eight months earlier that included $134m from Rakuten and SBI.
Hiroshi ‘Mickey’ Mikitani, Rakuten chief executive is chairman and CEO of Rakuten Medical. He led the $150m initial close of the series C round in mid-2018 having also provided $15.1m in series B1 funding for Rakuten Medical in 2017 after backing the first tranche of its series B round the previous year.
The company raised $4.3m in a series A extension in 2015 that followed $8.5m earlier in the same year, also from undisclosed investors.
