For General Corporate Purposes: A Roundup of San Diego Startups Raising Capital

Startup companies have been busy raising capital over the past few weeks, which include some time when I was out of the country. In a bid to catch up, I’ve collected these recent deals to help you catch up as well.

—Ambit Biosciences disclosed in a regulatory filing that it has raised $12 million out of a targeted $13.4 million financing that includes warrants to purchase as many as 284,584 preferred Series D shares or an undetermined number of preferred stock. The San Diego biotech has focused its technology on developing anti-cancer drug treatments from an emerging class of compounds that block the cellular activities of certain enzymes known as kinases. Ambit has moved to develop its own anti-cancer compounds after developing technology to screen large numbers of kinases for the best candidate compounds to block them.

—San Diego’s Allylix says it has closed its Series C round of funding by raising a total of $9 million, which includes $6 million the company disclosed in a regulatory filing in January. The company has been developing ways of using genetically engineered yeast to make specialty chemicals known as terpenes, a basic building block for both synthetic and naturally occurring fragrances, flavors, and other products. The company received additional investment from new investor Middleland Capital as well as existing investors Blue Grass Angels, Life Science Angels, Tech Coast Angels, Pasadena Angels and Tate & Lyle Ventures.

—San Diego-based TweetPhoto, a real-time platform for sharing Twitter and other social web media, says it has secured $2.6 million in a Series A financing led by Canaan Partners, with additional investment from Anthem Venture Partners and angel investors. The company plans to use the capital to accelerate development of its core technology, a platform of open application program interfaces, or APIs, and mobile software development kits for real-time media sharing across the social web. The funding also allows the company to expand its developer relations program and to introduce new products that further strengthen its position as the preferred way for leading application developers to incorporate real-time media sharing into their applications.

—Sotera Wireless, a San Diego startup previously known as Triage Wireless, says it has raised $10.7 million as part

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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.