Yoel Fink was a hard man to get a hold of back in March when Neil interviewed the OmniGuide CEO. Fink explained at the time that he was busy courting potential investors in a Series E round of funding for his Cambridge, MA-based medical device company, and that he hoped to raise $25 million to $30 million in the round. Well, it looks like Fink’s efforts paid off. OmniGuide today announced the closing of a $25 million deal led by Psilos Group and joined by existing investors Ray Stata, Stata Venture Partners, 3i, Argonaut Ventures, ESI, Gainesborough Investments, Jeff Swartz, and Westbury Partners.
The latest funding comes on top of about $50 million that OmniGuide has raised since its inception in 2000 as a telecom firm called OmniGuide Communications. Neil explained how the company transformed itself from a would-be maker of next-generation Internet cables to a real maker of laser-based medical devices—using the same hollow optical fiber technology developed in the MIT lab of John Joannopoulos, who founded the company with Fink.
OmniGuide launched its technology commercially in 2006 as a super-precise “optical scalpel” for minimally invasive surgery. The system is already used in the treatment of head and neck cancers, and with the new infusion of cash OmniGuide hopes to expand into a host of other surgical markets.
