Celesta Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurs and disruptive technology companies. Their management team and investment professionals leverage over 400 years of accumulated investment and operational experience and bring to their portfolio companies a deep and unmatched network of value-added strategic relationships.  Celesta Capital invests globally and has offices in California, Israel, India, and China

Celesta Capital

Paxion Capital Partners is a privately-held investment management firm that offers investment management services. It was founded in 2015 and is based in Menlo Park, California, United States.

Paxion Capital Partners

We are opportunistic investors with +25 years of dedication to the VC and tech community. Founded by second-generation venture capitalist Chris Lucas, our firm thrives on evaluating multi-stage companies with visionary founders poised to transform their markets. Our passionate group of partners bring their successful track records as seasoned investors, serial entrepreneurs, and operators to BDV. Together, we deliver access to leading and top-tier investment opportunities through our established +35 years of network, supporting extraordinary founders every step of the way.

Black Diamond Ventures

Sequoia is a venture capital focused on energy, financial, enterprise, healthcare, internet, and mobile startups. The firm helps a small number of daring founders build legendary companies. It spurs them to push the boundaries of what’s possible. The firm seeks to invest in all sectors with a focus on energy, financials and financial services, healthcare and healthcare services, Internet, mobile, outsourcing, and technology.

Sequoia Capital

Lucas Venture Group is a second generation venture capital firm focused on investments of $500,000-$5,000,000  Our focus spans robotics, networking, software analytics/big data, and trans formative autonomous machines. LVG was founded by second-generation venture capitalist Donald A. Lucas, who grew up in an environment steeped in the entrepreneurial spirit in Silicon Valley. He has spent his entire professional career focused on investing in private companies, working with entrepreneurs and their management teams, leveraging his vast network to create value throughout all stages of investments.

Lucas Venture Group

Walden Riverwood Ventures is a venture capital fiirm specializing in early stage investments. It seeks to invest globally in core technology companies. Walden Riverwood Ventures & IndusAge Partners combined and are now “WRVI Capital”.

Walden Riverwood Ventures

Nikon Corporation is engaged in the manufacture and sale of optics and imaging instruments. It operates in three segments: precision equipment, imaging products, and instruments. The precision equipment segment offers IC/LCD steppers and scanners that are used for manufacturing integrated circuits, liquid crystal display panels, and organic electroluminescence panels for smartphones and tablet computers.   The imaging products segment provides products and services such as digital SLR cameras, compact digital cameras, interchangeable camera lenses, film cameras, speed lights, binoculars, sport optics, photographic accessories, and software.   The instruments segment offers biological microscopes, industrial microscopes, stereoscopic microscopes, measuring instruments, surveying instruments, and semiconductor inspection equipment. Nikon Corporation also engages in the development, manufacture, and sale of customized optical equipment, space-related equipment, astronomy-related equipment, encoders, ophthalmic lenses, optical components, and glass material technologies. In addition, it focuses on the field of health and medical-related areas. It operates in Japan, Europe, the United States, China, and internationally. The company was formerly known as Nippon Kogaku K.K. and changed its name to Nikon Corporation in 1988. Nikon Corporation was founded in 1917 and is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

Nikon

Varian, Inc. is a leading worldwide supplier of scientific instruments and vacuum technologies for life science and industrial applications. The company provides complete solutions, including instruments, vacuum products, laboratory consumable supplies, software, training and support through its global distribution and support systems. Varian, Inc. employs approximately 3,900 people worldwide and operates manufacturing facilities in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Varian, Inc. had fiscal year 2008 sales of $1.0 billion.

Varian

Korea Technology Development Company, a government-funded investment vehicle specializing in technology-related investment opportunities, KTB Financial Group(“KTB”) has since grown into a comprehensive financial group offering a wide range of financial services, including securities, asset management, venture capital, and private equity. KTB also has expanded our global network by actively entering overseas markets includes the United States, China, and Thailand.

KTB Network

Cota Capital is an SEC-registered multi-stage investment firm focused on private and public enterprise technology companies. Cota has invested in more than 100 private and public technology companies since inception. Cota’s overall Mission is to deliver impactful outcomes through principle-guided investment in modern enterprise technologies.

Cota Capital

Best-in-class investments mainly in the U.S. medical devices technology, as well as biotech, and mobile healthcare sectors through early sta

Shangbay Capital

AJS Investments

Atinum Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in the growth stage startups in the IT, biotech, and healthcare sectors.

Atinum Partners

Berkeley Lights

Berkeley Lights is a provider of research and development services using micro-droplet technology intended to fundamentally change the way biological processes are done. The company's services revolutionize how scientists and researchers study the interaction of cells and transform and accelerate cellular therapies, enabling clients to meet the demands for cell-based processes in biotherapeutic discovery and development, cellular therapy manufacturing, synthetic biology, ag-bio, and other fields.

<div>Berkeley Lights operates a proprietary platform built with advanced automation to analyze live cells as well as application and workflow software to deliver robust single-cell data. Its platform enables users to perform rapid functional characterization of thousands of single cells in parallel while controlling the environment around each cell. It also offers a data library for every single cell which can be aggregated and analyzed by users digitally. This allows users to identify the best candidates and rapidly advance them while saving research and development (R&amp;D) expenditures on poorly performing cells. It aims to focus mainly on antibody therapeutics, cell therapy, and synthetic biology.</div>

Artificial intelligence is identifying and testing new therapies faster than ever.

AI Drug Discovery

Jason McEwen on LinkedIn: Reposting for visability. During his time as part of the Berkeley Lights…

GlaxoSmithKline

Berkeley Lights, Inc. announced to diliver a Beacon™ Optofluidic platform for cell line development to GlaxoSmithKline.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies to design and run preclinical experiments.

<div>
 
 Berkeley Lights operates a proprietary platform built with advanced automation to analyze live cells as well as application and workflow software to deliver robust single-cell data. Its platform enables users to perform rapid functional characterization of thousands of single cells in parallel while controlling the environment around each cell. It also offers a data library for every single cell which can be aggregated and analyzed by users digitally. This allows users to identify the best candidates and rapidly advance them while saving research and development (R&amp;D) expenditures on poorly performing cells. It aims to focus mainly on antibody therapeutics, cell therapy, and synthetic biology.
 
 
 In 2017, Bayer collaborated with Berkeley Lights to identify antibodies and accelerate the development of cell lines. It is also working with Amgen on antibody discovery. As of 2019, the company's customer base comprised 45 customers, including eight of the 10 big pharma companies. Berkeley Lights started trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market in July 2020, raising USD 205 million in gross proceeds via its IPO. It recorded an 81% YoY growth in revenue to USD 56.7 million in 2019 with net losses increasing by 27.5% YoY to USD 23.3 million. The growth in revenue is attributed to the significant increase (almost double) in both the adoption of Berkeley's platform by new users (22 new customers in 2019, up from 16 in 2018) and increased workflow utilization from existing customers.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 HiberCell is a biotechnology company that develops novel therapies focused on oncology. It entered the AI drug discovery space when it acquired AI genomics analysis company Genuity Science (and its subsidiaries in Iceland and Ireland) in August 2021.&nbsp;
 
 
 Genuity Science&rsquo;s solutions include end-to-end therapeutic discovery and development services such as building custom disease datasets, discovering and prioritizing targets, identifying biomarkers, and optimizing clinical trials. Genuity Science leverages its AI-powered platform to manage, process, and analyze genomic data. HiberCell intends to use Genuity Science&rsquo;s AI/ML capabilities to advance its oncology pipeline of five programs, of which one has reached the Phase 2 clinical trial stage.
 
 
 As of March 2024, the company&rsquo;s pipeline included three drug candidates, namely: 1) HC-7366, targeting the general control nonderepressible 2 (GCN2) kinase as part of the integrated stress response (ISR) signaling pathway; 2) HC-5404, aimed at inhibiting the PKR-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase (PERK) involved in the unfolded protein response (UPR) signaling pathway; and 3) odetiglucan, a therapy targeting tumor-immune interactions within the tumor microenvironment​.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In December 2023, HiberCell and Merck &amp; Co partnered to conduct a Phase Ib trial to evaluate the combination therapy of belzutifan and HC-7366 for treating clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Further, in January 2021, the company partnered with Biodesix to develop an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay as a companion diagnostic test.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://hibercell.com/news/hibercell-closes-67-4-million-series-b-financing-and-secures-30-million-debt-facility-from-hercules-capital/">
 May 2021
 </a>
 , HiberCell completed a Series B financing round, raising USD 67.4 million, and secured an additional USD 30 million in debt financing from Hercules Capital. The funds were expected to be used for clinical advancement of its novel therapeutic candidates. 
 
</div>

HiberCell

<div>
 
 Arbor Biotechnologies specializes in gene editing to develop novel therapeutics for a variety of indications, starting with liver-related diseases. It operates an AI-powered biodiscovery platform to discover novel CRISPR enzymes, which are sequences of repeating genetic code. To do this, its platform deploys computational search techniques, genome sequencing, gene synthesis, and high-throughput screening. This can eventually be turned into drugs or even applied to agriculture and other industrial uses. In 2018, the company announced the discovery of Cas13d, a new type of gene editing enzyme that helps to alter RNA to treat genetic diseases.&nbsp;
 
 
 As of February 2024, the company had five internal drug discovery programs, of which one was in the IND-enabling stage. It also has multiple collaborative programs under development focused on oncology and various other therapeutic areas.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has a long-standing partnership with Vertex Pharmaceuticals since
 <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190103005194/en/Vertex-and-Arbor-Biotechnologies-Establish-Collaboration-to-Discover-Novel-Proteins-to-Advance-Discovery-of-Gene-Editing-Therapies">
 January 2019
 </a>
 , which focused on developing gene-editing treatments for cystic fibrosis and four other diseases. The alliance was further extended in 
 <a href="https://www.biospace.com/article/vertex-and-arbor-strike-a-1-2-billion-deal-for-gene-editing-programs/">
 August 2021
 </a>
 and 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15741">
 January 2023
 </a>
 .&nbsp;
 
 
 Other partnerships included a collaboration with 
 <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arbor-biotechnologies-announces-collaboration-with-ginkgo-bioworks-to-advance-the-discovery-and-development-of-precision-gene-editors-302011991.html">
 Ginkgo Bioworks
 </a>
 (December 2023) to leverage Ginkgo's R&amp;D services to further optimize Arbor's novel precision editors, a non-exclusive licensing agreement with 
 <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/02/08/2380680/0/en/EdiGene-and-Arbor-Biotechnologies-Announce-Worldwide-Non-exclusive-License-Agreement-to-Advance-Ex-Vivo-Engineered-Cell-Therapy-Programs.html">
 EdiGene
 </a>
 (February 2022) to leverage Arbor&rsquo;s platform for ex vivo oncology therapies, a strategic research and non-exclusive licensing agreement with 
 <a href="https://investors.tcr2.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tcr2-therapeutics-and-arbor-biotechnologies-establish">
 TCR2 Therapeutics
 </a>
 (January 2022) to develop allogeneic TRuC T-cell therapies using Arbor&rsquo;s CRISPR technology, and a license agreement with 
 <a href="https://www.lonza.com/news/2020-12-23-14-00">
 Lonza
 </a>
 (December 2020) to use Arbor&rsquo;s gene-editing technology for Lonza&rsquo;s bioproduction products and services.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In its latest Series B funding round in November 2021, which was led by Ally Bridge Group, TCG Crossover, and Temasek, Arbor Biotechnologies raised USD 215 million. The proceeds of the round were earmarked to fuel the company&rsquo;s clinical development pipeline.
 
</div>

Arbor Biotechnologies

Based in the UK, Arctoris provides an automated drug discovery platform, offering fully validated research and development (R&amp;D) processes under an Experiments-as-a-Service model. The company works with biotechnology companies, AI drug discovery companies, pharma and academic institutions enabling these institutions to run experiments in Arctoris’s platform and provides on-demand access to a broad scale of datasets for AI drug discovery companies to train their algorithms.

Arctoris

<div>
 
 Frontier Medicines leverages AI/ML technologies to develop treatments for cancer-causing proteins that are dismissed by traditional pharma companies as undruggable.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company has a proprietary chemoproteomic platform which entails an approach based on the interaction of small-molecule compounds and proteins to screen a large number of targets and combine them with a protein database that contains more than 150,000 novel binding pockets (hotspots). This enables it to access 90% of the human proteome that were not previously targeted due to lack of hotspots. The platform&rsquo;s AI/ML engine incorporates a library of diverse compounds, a hotspot map that serves as the starting point for understanding the druggability of a potential therapeutic target, and lead design and generation.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company focuses on oncology and immunology target and, as of February 2024, it had five wholly-owned therapeutic programs and three AbbVie-partnered programs in its pipeline. All programs were in their discovery stage, except the company&rsquo;s lead candidate, FMC-376 (activated and inactivated forms), focused on treating different cancer types, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), colorectal carcinoma (CRC), and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), which is in the IND-enabling stage.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company entered a USD 100 million partnership with 
 <a href="https://news.abbvie.com/2020-12-02-AbbVie-and-Frontier-Medicines-Establish-Global-Partnership-to-Discover-and-Develop-Novel-Therapies-and-E3-Degraders-Against-Difficult-to-Drug-Targets">
 AbbVie
 </a>
 In December 2020 to develop small-molecule therapeutics against hard-to-drug protein targets including around 600 E3 ligases (the enzymes that drive the ubiquitination and degradation of proteins.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In July 2021, the company raised USD 88.5 million in a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4347">
 Series B
 </a>
 funding round co-led by Woodline Partners LP and RA Capital Management, with equal participation from Deerfield Management Company. The proceeds were earmarked for advancing the company&rsquo;s drug pipeline and expanding operations in Boston, where its new facility was to complement the company&rsquo;s headquarters in California. 
 
</div>

Frontier Medicines

<div>
 
 Verge Genomics is a biotechnology company engaged in developing therapeutics for neurological diseases using human genomics and AI to accelerate drug discovery. The main target areas are Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson&rsquo;s Disease (PD), and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD).&nbsp;
 
 
 It has built a proprietary all-human platform (unlike standard clinical trials that rely on animal data), called CONVERGE, that uses data sets from brain tissue samples of deceased patients with ALS and PD. While most drugs target only one gene at a time, the company claims its technology can identify hundreds of genes that cause disease and develop drugs that target all the genes at the same time. The company uses AI technology to optimize the drug discovery process as a whole.
 
 
 As of March 2024, Verge had one drug candidate in the clinical stage (Phase I) and 10 drug candidates in the discovery stage.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has partnerships with various tissue banks (such as Harvard University and University of Miami Miller School of Medicine) and several educational institutes and foundations (such as Target ALS, Answer ALS) that enabled its drug discovery platform.&nbsp;
 
 
 In addition, the company&rsquo;s customers include several pharmaceutical companies, such as 1) 
 <a href="https://www.vergegenomics.com/news-blog/verge-genomics-announces-research-collaboration-with-the-sheffield-institute-for-translational-neuroscience">
 Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN)
 </a>
 to accelerate the validation of novel drug targets and screening of drug compounds for Parkinson's disease (February 2021), 2) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4146">
 Eli Lilly
 </a>
 to research and develop novel therapies to treat ALS (July 2021), 3) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21707">
 Alexion
 </a>
 to identify novel drug targets for rare neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases (September 2023), and 4) 
 <a href="https://www.vergegenomics.com/news-blog/verge-genomics-and-the-pritzker-neuropsychiatric-disorders-research-consortium-form-cutting-edge-schizophrenia-research-collaboration">
 Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Disorders Research Consortium
 </a>
 to analyze data from schizophrenic patient&rsquo;s brain tissue with Verge&rsquo;s technology (October 2023).
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In December 2021, Verge raised USD 98 million in an oversubscribed 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7426">
 Series A
 </a>
 funding round led by BlackRock. The funds were used to scale up its pre-clinical and clinical candidate programs in the pipeline and enhance its lead therapeutics through clinical testing. 
 
</div>

Verge Genomics

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies for drug discovery services such as target selection, validation and lead optimization.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies to identify biomarkers (measurable biological signs used to determine disease progression) and predict drug response. 

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies aggregating and analyzing biomedical data with the help of AI to generate insights across the drug development pipeline.

Biotechnology companies that have integrated AI as a core component of their in-house drug development process. They typically have a few in-house drug development programs, and also collaborate with pharma companies to develop certain drugs.

Companies leverage GenAI to support drug discovery through accelerated drug designing

Companies offer AI/ML-based SaaS products to accelerate the discovery and development of novel therapeutics

Offers AI/ML-based solutions to accelerate drug discovery and development

Berkeley Lights

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