Compared to the handful of “under the radar” deals we had to report on in our May roundup, the month of June was buzzing with deals, both small and large, for Seattle-area tech and biotech companies. Normally we publish our “under the radar” roundup for regional deals worth less than $1 million in a monthly post. However, for the first time this month we are combining our normal “under the radar” list with deals worth more than $1 million, creating one comprehensive report of all local equity deals. This information is based on data provided by New York-based private company intelligence platform CB Insights, and our own past coverage.
Despite the fact that deals of all sizes are represented on the June list, the majority were for less than $1 million. And contrary to what you might assume, given that Seattle is a hub for many areas of information technology, healthcare and energy/utilities companies dominated the roundup. Of the $104.3 million in venture dollars raked in through 20 equity deals in June, Washington companies in the healthcare sector pulled in $41.1 million, while those in energy and utilities brought in $35.8 million.
The third leading sector was computer hardware and services, which raised $15 million in investments last month. Internet startups came in fourth at $4.9 million, and industrial startups followed up with $3.95 million, while financing for business products and services, software, and video startups all trailed behind.
We reported on the majority of June venture investments as the news broke, including the $40 million nabbed by Seattle-based Calistoga Pharmaceuticals, amounting to the biggest Washington venture deal of 2010 thus far. Not far behind was three-year-old Intellectual Ventures spinout, Bellevue,WA-based TerraPower, which brought in $35 million in Series B funding for further development of its traveling wave nuclear reactor. Other notable deals include the $11 million Seattle software developer Opscode earned in Series B led by Battery Ventures, and the $4 million raised by cloud storage and data protection Seattle startup Symform.
However, a number of interesting deals slipped under our radar. Here are a few that I found interesting: Bellevue, WA-based online collaboration and file sharing software developer OneHub raised $750,000 in equity. The three-year-old company, which provides cloud-based software-as-a-service for thousands of companies, raised $1.3 million in Series A financing led by local venture capital firm Ignition Partners back in October. Liberty Lake, WA-based Demand Energy Networks, which is developing technology to help energy providers manage their electricity supply, brought in $650,000. The company, founded in 2008, has developed a tool called the Demand Shifter, which allows a variety of businesses and consumers to store electricity at distributed end points during times of low demand, and control and dispatch it as it’s needed.
Seattle-based medical device developer Uptake Medical raised $600,000 in equity in June. The interventional pulmonology company then followed that up with another $17.5 million in a Series B round led by Maverick Capital this month. The only video game startup on the list, Redmond, WA-based Novel, raised $550,000 in equity. The 20-person startup plans to change the gaming industry and corporate culture as we know them by applying massively multiplayer online (MMO) gaming techniques to create new kinds of games and business simulations for companies. Seattle-based Liquid Light brought in $200,000 in equity financing. The early-state energy startup is expanding on the research of Princeton University professor Andrew Bocarsly to develop highly efficient technology for converting carbon dioxide to fuels and industrial chemicals without using biological feedstocks. this month. The only video game startup on the list, Redmond, WA-based
Here’s the full list of June’s equity-based deals, both under the radar and on it:
June also saw a few startups raising cash through deals based on debt, options, and/or warrants, rather than equity. Those three transactions, worth a combined $1.64 million, are listed below.
