Latest Posts

• Bio Roundup: Zolgensma Watch, Brain Cancer Blues, Peloton Payout & More

  Patients, doctors, family members, and drug-price watchdogs continued to wait for the expected approval of Zolgensma, a Novartis (NYSE: NVS) gene therapy for the rare inherited disease spinal muscular atrophy. Originally developed at a children’s hospital in Ohio,... Read more »

  Alex Lash5/24/19

• Scoop Partners with Bedrock to Bring Carpooling Service to Detroiters

  Scoop, the app-based carpooling service headquartered in San Francisco, landed in Detroit this week and will now facilitate rides for residents living in seven Motor City ZIP codes that encompass downtown, Midtown, Corktown, and neighborhoods to the immediate east and... Read more »

  Sarah Schmid Stevenson5/24/19

• Nektar Forms New Company Inheris to Take Reins on Pain, CNS Drugs

  If Nektar Therapeutics wins FDA approval this summer for an opioid painkiller it designed to be less addictive than other opioids, another company will usher the new product onto the market.

  San Francisco-based Nektar (NASDAQ: NKTR) announced Thursday that it... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan5/23/19

• Ideaya and Bicycle Therapeutics IPOs Raise $110M for Cancer Drug R&D

  Ideaya Biosciences and Bicycle Therapeutics priced their IPOs late Wednesday, raising a combined $110 million to continue clinical trials of their respective experimental cancer drugs.

  South San Francisco-based Ideaya raised $50 million. The company priced its offering of 5 million shares... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan5/23/19

• Cala Health Secures $50M to Launch Anti-Tremor Wrist Device

  Cala Health announced this week it raised $50 million in a Series C financing that will fund the market introduction of its wristwatch-like device that delivers nerve stimulation as a remedy for tremors of the hands.

  New investors Novartis, Baird Capital,... Read more »

  Bernadette Tansey5/22/19

• Agrilyst Rebrands as Artemis, Lands $8M for Indoor Farming Software

  Agrilyst, an agtech startup that has commercialized software that helps manage indoor farms and greenhouses, is unveiling a new name and additional capital. The company is now called Artemis and it has raised an $8 million Series A round of funding.... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan5/22/19

• With $120M, AlloVir Faces Big Test of Cell Therapy to Fight Infection

  In healthy people, viruses are kept in check by the immune system. But for immunocompromised patients, such as those undergoing transplant procedures, a viral infection is potentially deadly. AlloVir is developing a cell therapy intended to control infections while a patient’s... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan5/22/19

• AI Startup Clinc Snags $52M Series B to Expand Offices, Markets

  Ann Arbor, MI-based startup Clinc, which is focused on developing conversational artificial intelligence software for use in chatbots, has raised $52 million in a Series B round, the company announced this week. The round was led by Insight Partners,... Read more »

  Sarah Schmid Stevenson5/21/19

• Sebastian Thrun and Udacity Launch New Self-Driving Nanodegree

  [Corrected 5/21/19, 11:04 am. See below.] Sebastian Thrun first made his mark on autonomous vehicle development at the dawn of that industry, when he led a Stanford team whose robot car Stanley won the $2 million DARPA Grand Challenge... Read more »

  Bernadette Tansey5/21/19

• Guardicore Raises $60M and Moves US HQ to Boston From San Francisco

  US-Israeli cybersecurity startup Guardicore is moving its American headquarters from San Francisco to Boston after hiring a Massachusetts marketing executive and raising a $60 million funding round.

  The Tel Aviv-based company’s decision to run American operations from Boston is a well-worn... Read more »

  Brian Dowling5/21/19

• Auth0 Gets “Unicorn” Status as It Raises $103M for Security Tools

  Auth0, a Bellevue, WA-based developer of user identification and login tools for software makers and large businesses, announced Monday it has raised $103 million in new financing. Under the terms of the deal, investors valued Auth0 at more than $1 billion,... Read more »

  Jeff Buchanan5/20/19

• HAP Partners With Livongo on Tech-Enabled Diabetes Compliance Program

  As digital health applications continue to grow in popularity, yet achieve only mixed results, one area in which tech-enabled tools have found success is among diabetes patients.

  Health Alliance Plan (HAP), a Detroit-based nonprofit health insurance provider, wants to leverage that... Read more »

  Sarah Schmid Stevenson5/20/19

• Hewlett Packard Enterprise Buying Supercomputer Pioneer Cray for $1.3B

  Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will pay $1.3 billion to acquire Cray, a Seattle business that develops software used in supercomputers and other high-powered machines.

  High-performance computing technologies, such as those developed by Cray, are seen as central to sorting through “the explosion... Read more »

  Jeff Buchanan5/17/19

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• Bio Roundup: Generic Drugs Graft, ASCO Ahead, ElevateBio Rises & More

  Generic drugs are supposed to give consumers more choices and a counterweight to more costly branded medications. During his tenure as FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb often spoke about generics as a market force that could help tame climbing drug prices. But... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan5/17/19

• ASCO Abstracts: Breast Cancer, Precision Treatments in the Spotlight

  The world’s biggest annual cancer conference is just around the corner. Data presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting each year can change medical practice and make or break companies whose drugs are under the microscope. That’s what makes... Read more »

  Ben Fidler5/16/19

• Karat Gets $28M for Software, Team That Assess Job-Seeking Engineers

  Karat, a Seattle-based startup that uses a combination of software and a stable of freelance interviewers to help tech companies assess job applicants, announced Wednesday it has raised $28 million in new funding.

  Tiger Global Management led the Series B funding... Read more »

  Jeff Buchanan5/15/19

• Ginkgo Eyes Antibiotics With Deal for Warp Drive’s Gene “Mining” Tech

  Microbes designed by Ginkgo Bioworks are used in consumer products such as fragrances and beverages, and they’re undergoing research for applications in agriculture and medicine. The synthetic biology company has been pushing to expand its technology to more uses, and its... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan5/15/19

• Eyeing Future IPO, A Rarity for SD Software Firms, Tealium Adds $55M

  San Diego has had plenty of businesses go public in recent years, but most have been life sciences companies.

  Now software startup Tealium, which has about 215 employees at its San Diego headquarters, announced Wednesday it has added $55 million in... Read more »

  Sarah de Crescenzo5/15/19

• Endpoint Security Company CrowdStrike Files Publicly for IPO

  CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company that identified the two Russian government-linked hacker groups that invaded the Democratic National Committee (DNC)’s network during the 2016 presidential campaign, filed publicly for an initial public offering on Tuesday.

  Sunnyvale, CA-based CrowdStrike sells cloud-based security... Read more »

  Bernadette Tansey5/14/19

• Weather Tech Q&A: Understory CEO on “Ground Truth,” Climate Change

  [Updated 5/17/19, 3:56 pm ET. See below.] As climate change brings more extreme and unpredictable weather, the stakes for improving the ability to track and forecast atmospheric conditions are rising.

  That has contributed to a growing interest in startups... Read more »

  Jeff Engel5/14/19

• Respond Raises $20M to Advance Automated Response to Cyberattacks

  In business sectors such as warehouse operations, automation may put a company’s current employees out of work in some cases. In the cybersecurity sector, automation can take up a multitude of tasks without displacing any staffers—because there aren’t enough qualified humans... Read more »

  Bernadette Tansey5/14/19

• ElevateBio Gets $150M to Grow a Crop of Gene & Cell Therapy Startups

  When a biotech startup is ready to test an experimental therapy it faces a pricey choice: Should it make its drug in-house, or hire a contract manufacturer? The decision is particularly expensive for companies developing complex gene and cell therapies, which... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan5/13/19

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• ClassDojo CEO: Never Too Early for Kids to Learn About Mindfulness

  If you felt a positive disturbance in The Force today, it may have been due to ClassDojo’s Mindful Moment. At 11am local time, millions of kids from schools in 180 countries are participating in the “world’s biggest virtual mindfulness class.”... Read more »

  Sarah Schmid Stevenson5/10/19

• Tech Ethics, Regulation & Strategy: Here’s the Napa Summit Agenda

  With Uber’s long-awaited IPO, Facebook’s mounting controversies, and ongoing debates over drug pricing and safety issues, come a great responsibility. A big story in the innovation community now is about the ethics and regulation of tech and life sciences. What are... Read more »

  Gregory T. Huang5/10/19

• Bio Roundup: Rare Disease Showdowns, Prices on TV, Dealmania & More

  The market for drugs for rare or “orphan” diseases continues to grow. An April report from Evaluate Pharma predicted sales of orphan drugs to rise 12 percent a year between now and 2024, when they will account for an estimated 20... Read more »

  Ben Fidler5/10/19

• Uber Completes $8.1B Public Market Debut in Spite of Tumultuous Past

  [Updated 5/10/19, 5 pm ET. See below.] Ride-hailing giant Uber secured $8.1 billion in new capital late Thursday as it priced an initial public offering that set its market capitalization at $82.4 billion, according to calculations by The... Read more »

  Bernadette Tansey5/9/19

• Two Days, Five Biotech IPOs, and $359M Raised for Clinical Trials

  It will be hard to top last year’s flurry of biotech companies joining the public markets, but this week is shaping up to be the busiest for life science IPOs in recent memory. Five biotechs priced their IPOs and at least... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan5/9/19

• Mobility News: Cruise’s New Cash, Tesla’s Pivot to Robotaxis & More

  As the mobility industry waits with baited breath to see how Uber’s IPO will play out on Friday, there is plenty of news being made elsewhere in the sector. Cruise scored another massive investment, Toyota AI Ventures opened a new fund,... Read more »

  Sarah Schmid Stevenson5/8/19

• Goldfinch Bio Lands $55M From Gilead in Kidney Drug R&D Pact

  Goldfinch Bio set out to build a database of patients with kidney diseases, which it could study to understand the biology and genetics of kidney disorders in order to develop better drugs. The biotech startup is making headway on its research... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan5/8/19

• Lyft Posts $1.1B Loss for Q1 in First Earnings Report Post-IPO

  Newly public ride-hailing company Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT) filed its first-quarter earnings results Tuesday, reporting a 95 percent increase in revenue compared with the same period in 2018, but a net loss of nearly $1.14 billion.

  That first-quarter loss includes $894 million... Read more »

  Bernadette Tansey5/7/19

• SMA, Migraine Data Lead Neuro Highlights from AAN Meeting

  The American Academy of Neurology meeting in Philadelphia is rolling on through the end of this week. There has been plenty of news to digest already. New clinical data could herald cutting-edge treatments for migraine, the rare disease spinal muscular atrophy,... Read more »

  Ben Fidler5/7/19

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