San Diego’s Top 10 Venture Deals of 2009

The good folks at Dow Jones VentureSource provided us with a list of the 10 biggest private-equity deals in Southern California in 2009, but it might have been just as easy if Dow Jones had focused solely on San Diego. Seven of the region’s 10 biggest deals of 2009 were in the San Diego area, with six deals representing substantial venture investments in life sciences companies. Bear in mind, of course, that the vast majority of California’s venture deals occur in the Bay Area.

Irvine-CA based Fisker Automotive broke the tape in Southern California with total funding of $85 million in 2009, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. Fisker piled on with additional funding earlier this month, announcing it had raised $115.3 million in new private equity funding as well as a partnership with battery supplier A123Systems of Watertown, MA. (And as Xconomy Boston’s Ryan McBride reports, A123 not only raised almost $100 million in 2009, but went public last year in a $380 million IPO.)The other two big deals that were beyond San Diego’s hallowed borders were Pasadena, CA-based eSolar, which got $40 million last March, and Irvine-based Visiogen, which also got $40 million last April.

San Diego-based Zogenix, a specialty pharmaceutical company, raised $71 million in a later-stage round to support the January 13 introduction of its medical device, which enables patients to self-administer a 6-milligram dose of sumatriptan, a fast-acting pain-killer for migraine headaches.

In putting together a list of San Diego’s “Top 10 Deals of 2009” with just seven deals, I decided to add my best guess of three more contenders, drawn from reports right here at Xconomy San Diego, to round out our top 10 list. One curiosity about the data from Dow Jones VentureSource is that it did not count the sizable $50 million funding round that Helicon Therapeutics disclosed in a Form D filing in June. The company’s website says it moved to San Diego in 2008 from Farmingdale, NY.

You’ll notice that three companies raised $50 million rounds, meaning they’re tied for the No. 4 spot. You can learn more about all the companies by following the links.

The list:

1. Zogenix, San Diego, CA—$71 million (Series C)

2. V-Vehicle, San Diego, CA—$62.26 million (Series A)

3. Tandem Diabetes Care, San Diego, CA—$52.3 million (Series B)

4. Sangart, San Diego, CA—$50 million (Series F)

4. PhotoThera, Carlsbad, CA—$50 million (Series E)

4. Helicon Therapeutics, San Diego, CA—$50 million (Series F)

5. Victory Pharma, San Diego, CA—$45 million (Series A)

6. Fate Therapeutics, San Diego, CA—$30.49 million (Series B)

7. Fallbrook Technologies, San Diego, CA—$29.4 million (Series A, two tranches)

8. MPex Pharma, San Diego, CA—$27.5 million (Series D)

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.