EvoNexus says its startups have collectively raised more than $850 million in venture funding, deals backed by 175 investors. Roughly a quarter of the total the companies have raised, $226 million, came in 2018—a banner year for the incubator in a number of ways. Last year saw acquisitions of multiple companies that have spent time under EvoNexus’s roof, including Edico Genome, which was snapped up by Illumina (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ILMN]]) for $100 million, and Portfolium, upon which Instructure (NYSE: [[ticker:INST]]) splashed $43 million in a cash-and-stock deal.
Twenty-six of the more than 200 companies accepted into the incubator since its start have been acquired, according to the organization.
Lately, the incubator has been ramping up its corporate collaborations, signing deals with EMD Performance Materials, the US-based materials science subsidiary of Germany’s Merck KGaA, to incubate materials science startups, and with the Royal Bank of Canada (NYSE: [[ticker:RY]]) and Franklin Templeton (NYSE: [[ticker:BEN]]) for a fintech cohort.
