NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Oxford Nanopore Technologies today said that it has raised £40 million ($63.7 million) through a private placement of ordinary shares.
Participants in the round include new and existing investors from the US, UK, and mainland Europe, the company said. New investors included Odey Asset Management.
The funds will go toward development of Oxford Nanopore's commercial and manufacturing infrastructure, continued R&D work directed at nanopore sensing, and other corporate purposes.
The privately held company previously raised about $51 million in May 2012, and with today's haul, the amount raised by Oxford Nanopore since its founding in 2005 totals £145 million, it said.
The company debuted its DNA strand sequencing platforms in early 2012 and said it planned to commercialize its technology during that year, according to In Sequence. Since then, though, it has been largely silent as the market continues to await the launch of its platforms. In a research note today, Goldman Sachs analyst Isaac Ro said, "Our current checks suggest that beta systems have yet to hit the field."
Most recently, Oxford Nanopore said that a commercialization deal it had with Illumina would end in June 2016. The agreement was struck in 2009, and terms called for Illumina to exclusively market, sell, distribute, and service products based on Oxford's so-called Base technology, which is different from its strand sequencing technology.