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10:13 | 14 August 2023

This is a weekly column about the five biggest funding rounds of the past week.

We continue our weekly column on the top 5 venture capital rounds of the past week.

While everyone has been all but talking about the big fundraising in startup Neuralink this past week, it was actually biotech that led the way. Three of the five largest rounds were led by biotech companies, as well as large cyber insurance deals.

Neuralink, $280M

Sector: neuroscience.
The week started with some high-profile announcements: Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink announced (on Musk’s X-owned website, of course) that it had raised $280 million in new funding from investors to develop its technology. The round was led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. The value of the company was not reported, but Reuters reported in June that the valuation was around $5 billion. Neuralink, a company trying to enable people to communicate with computers through brain work, received approval earlier this year to conduct its first human clinical trial. In doing so, the company has not avoided controversy. Last year, it was reported that the company was rushing animal operations to get government approval. The company was founded in 2016 and has raised $643 million in funding.

ADARx Pharmaceuticals, $200M

Sector: biotech.
Last week was not a very active week in biotech – by biotech standards – in terms of big rounds. However, it made a nice spurt last week. First up was San Diego-based ADARx Pharmaceuticals, which is developing next-generation, clinical-stage RNAi therapeutics, which raised $200 million in a Series C co-led by Bain Capital Life Sciences and TCG Crossover. The 4-year-old company has developed RNAi platforms and technology for editing targeted mRNAs and is developing therapeutic drugs to treat genetic, cardiovascular, central nervous system and other types of diseases. The company was founded in 2019 and has raised $332 million in funding.

Alltrna, $109M

Sector: biotech.
Alltrna, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company developing genetic medicines based on transfer RNA molecules, has raised a $109 million Series B round. The company did not announce a lead investor, but said investors include Flagship Pioneering, which founded the company, and “a number of high caliber investors.” Alltrna is one of the few biotech companies trying to use tRNA biology to correct diseases through its own platform. The company was founded in 2018 and has raised $159 million in funding so far.

Resilience, $100M

Sector: cybersecurity.
t wasn’t that long ago that cyber insurance didn’t yet exist, as companies struggled to determine exactly how to assess cyber risk within a company. That time has long since passed. Cyber insurance certainly exists, and San Francisco-based Resilience has raised $100 million dollars to prove it. The startup helps companies analyze their systems for potential risks and attacks, and works with underwriters to write policies. The round was led by Intact Ventures, the venture capital arm of Intact Insurance. The company was founded in 2017 and has raised $217 million in funding.

Georgiamune, $75M

Sector: biotech.
Georgiamune, based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, another clinical-stage biotech company, has raised $75 million in Series A funding co-led by General Catalyst and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. Perhaps the biggest news for the company, however, was that it received FDA approval to file a New Drug Application to develop a dual-function monoclonal antibody to overcome immunotherapy resistance. The company was founded in 2014 and this is the first external round.


We’ve summarized last week’s results and hope you found the information useful. Stay tuned for more information.

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