Last week saw new filings for both an IPO and an SPO. Could the climate for exits be getting a little better? (Seems like it would be hard for it to get much worse.) Here’s the news on those filings, and the rest of the recent deals.
—Codon Devices, a Cambridge, MA-based startup focusing on applications of synthetic biology, settled a patent suit it filed last March against Bothell, WA-based Blue Heron Biotechnology.
—MIT Media Lab and Bank of America inked a five-year deal worth $15 to $25 million to create a research center at the Lab to study the future of the banking industry. Media Lab director Frank Moss and MIT professor Deb Roy told Wade the deal was perhaps the biggest corporate sponsorship win in the lab’s history.
—Woburn, MA’s BioTrove, an MIT spinoff that makes tools for life sciences research, filed for an IPO worth up to $75 million. BioTrove’s investors include Catalyst Health and Technology Partners, CB Health Ventures, Zero Stage Capital, Echelon Ventures, and Fletcher Spaght.
—Hopkinton, MA-based EMC (NYSE: [[ticker:EMC]]) announced it would shell out about $84 million for the UK-based consulting firm Conchango, which specializes in custom implementations of Microsoft enterprise software.
—Monotype Imaging (NASDAQ: [[ticker:TYPE]]) of Woburn, MA, filed for a secondary offering worth up to $101 million; all the proceeds will go to selling stockholders of the text-imaging firm.
—Cambridge, MA-based speech-recognition startup Vlingo raised $20 million in a Series B funding round led by Yahoo.
—Radius Health, also of Cambridge, raised $28.3 million in second Series C closing from MPM Capital, The Wellcome Trust, HealthCare Ventures, Oxford Bioscience Partners, BB Biotech Ventures, and Scottish Widows Investment Partnership. The new financing, which brings the total raised in the round to $67.5 million, was a planned reward for Radius finishing enrollment in a Phase 2 trial of its lead drug candidate, a treatment for osteoporosis.
—Merrimack, NH’s GT Solar signed $91 million contract with The Silicon Mine, a Dutch photovoltaic manufacturer, to supply equipment for the Netherlands’ first solar-grade silicon plants.
—East Providence, RI-based medical device maker IlluminOss Medical closed a Series B financing from New Leaf Ventures and Foundation Medical Partners worth $11.02 million, according to a report in PE Hub.
—An auction of the assets of the defunct Cambridge, MA, e-commerce startup N2N, scheduled for April 11, was postponed until May 2. Before ceasing operations around Christmas last year, N2N had raised $30 million from General Catalyst Partners and Limited Brands (from which it spun off).
