As 2016 comes to an end, let’s take a look at some of the more notable stories from Xconomy Texas over the past year. What follows is my highly subjective list of news that we covered in 2016.
Notable exits and fundraises:
—San Antonio cloud computing company Rackspace was bought by New York private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $4.3 billion.
—Houston’s Meshify, an IoT software startup, is bought by insurance company Hartford Steam Boiler, a subsidiary of global insurer Munich Re for an undisclosed amount.
—Dallas biotech Peloton raises $54.2 million to develop its kidney cancer drug candidate.
—Spredfast, an Austin, TX-based maker of social marketing software, raised $50 million in venture funding.
—Austin biotech LDR Holdings (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LDRH]]) is bought by Zimmer Biomet (NYSE: [[ticker:ZBH]]), which is based in Warsaw, IN.
—Austin biotech Lumos Pharma raised $34 million to fund clinical trials for a potential therapy for creatine transporter deficiency (CTD), a disease that is the second leading cause of X-linked mental retardation in males after Fragile X syndrome.
—Goldman Sachs bought Austin fintech startup Honest Dollar for an undisclosed amount. Honest Dollar built software for small- and medium-sized businesses to provide employees with retirement benefits through web and mobile applications.
—Dallas fintech firm StoneEagle Services was bought by FTV Capital, a San Francisco venture firm. StoneEagle sells virtual “credit cards” for business-to-business payments in order to digitize traditional processes such as insurance company payments to healthcare providers.
The Texas Medical Center expands its programs to promote health IT and medical device startups as the Houston life sciences ecosystem grows:
—J&J innovation adds on to its programming at TMC’s Innovation Institute with a new Center for Medical Device Innovation. Earlier in the year, the pharmaceutical company opened its latest JLabs in Houston with 21 resident companies, a medical device prototype lab, and a 3-D printer.
—AT&T opens its Foundry for Connected Health at the TMCx accelerator campus as well. AT&T plans to use its expertise in mobile communications for use in healthcare, such as remote patient monitoring systems that work via a tablet.
—Having programs that cater to young health startups is a start but what about getting them into the commercialization stage?
