Private Equity
Sysdig, the San Francisco producer of performance-management solutions to monitor, alert and troubleshoot in a microservices-friendly architecture, raised $15 million of Series B funding. Participating were current investors Accel and Bain Capital Ventures. Sysdig said it would use the funds to further build out its core technology and grow its operations and support infrastructure. Salil Deshpande, managing director at Bain Capital Ventures, is joining Sysdig’s board.
3 min read · 22 April 2016
3 min read · 22 April 2016
Hua Medicine, the Shanghai clinical-stage firm developing therapies for diabetes and central-nervous-system disorders, closed $50 million (in U.S. dollars and yuan) of Series C financing. The round, 3x oversubscribed, was led by Harvest Investments, the Chinese PE firm. Current investors were led by BioVentures and included Arch, Venrock, Fidelity (now Eight Roads and F-Prime Capital), WuXi Ventures, SAIL, Ally Bridge Group and TF Capital. Hua will use the funds to, among other things, help complete long-term Phase II clinical trials this year and speed the Phase III development plans of HMS5552, a new fourth-generation glucokinase activator for Type 2 diabetes. China Renaissance was Hua’s financial adviser.
3 min read · 22 April 2016
Babson Capital Management, the Charlotte, North Carolina, manager of more than $231 billion of assets, said it served as lead agent in a senior secured credit line to finance Accruent LLC’s acquisition of Mainspring Healthcare Solutions. Boston-based Mainspring provides software and technology to U.S. hospitals. Accruent, Austin, Texas, provides real-estate and facilities-management services. Mainspring is Accruent’s fourth add-on investment that Babson has led since supporting TA Associates’ recapitalization of Accruent in 2013. TA is the Boston private equity firm. Babson is a member of the MassMutual Financial Group.
2 min read · 22 April 2016
Preempt Security, the San Francisco network-security specialist, closed $8 million of Series A funding, which it plans to use to expand marketing and sales and speed product development. General Catalyst Partners, the Cambridge, Mass., investment firm, led the round; also participating were Mickey Boodaei and Rakesh Loonkar, the founders of Trusteer, and Paul Sagan, former chief executive of Akamai. And the company named Heather Howland vice president of marketing. She had been VP marketing for Lacoon Mobile Security, where she helped position the company to be acquired by Check Point Software in 2015. Preempt says a number of its team members were part of Unit 8200, the Israel Defense Forces intelligence corps.
3 min read · 21 April 2016
Littlejohn & Co’s Wellfleet Credit Partners closed a $358.5 million collateralized loan obligation. It’s the second issued by Wellfleet, the performing-credit business of Littlejohn, the Greenwich, Conn., middle-market private equity firm. The first CLO closed last September at $360 million. The latest CLO is backed by a diversified portfolio of broadly syndicated senior secured loans, Wellfleet said in a statement. Six classes of notes rated Aaa through Ba3 by Moody’s and two classes of notes rated AAA by Fitch totaling $324.0 million were placed. Morgan Stanley & Co was arranger for the CLO and Dechert LLP was legal adviser.
3 min read · 21 April 2016
Brighter, the Santa Monica, California, developer of a tech-driven dental-service, -payment and marketing platform, raised $21 million in a Series D round led by General Catalyst Partners, the Cambridge, Massachusetts venture capital firm. Participating were DAG Ventures and current investors Mayfield, Benchmark and Tenaya. Gabe Ling, a partner at General Catalyst, joins Brighter’s board. Brighter said it would use the funds to recruit enterprise software product and engineering staff.
3 min read · 20 April 2016
Second Genome Inc, the closely held South San Francisco biopharmaceutical company, closed a Series B investment round with $42.6 million in financing. The round was co-led by Pfizer Venture Investments and Roche Venture Fund. Participating were a number of new investors — Digitalis Ventures, Adveq, LifeForce Capital, MBL Venture Capital, and the Mayo Clinic — as well as Series A investors Advanced Technology Ventures, Morgenthaler Ventures, Seraph Group, and individual investor Matthew Winkler, Ph.D. Second Genome has now raised a total investment of $59 million. With the new financing, Elaine Jones, executive director of Pfizer Venture Investments, and Carole Nuechterlein, head of Roche Venture Fund, will join the Second Genome board.
3 min read · 20 April 2016
Brazos Private Equity Partners LLC, the Dallas private investment firm, sold Southern Tide LLC, a Greenville, South Carolina, apparel brand, to Oxford Industries Inc. Brazos said that under its management, Southern Tide, a lifestyle apparel brand combining “high-quality design with classic Southern style,” expanded its product line, sales channels and geographic presence. Brazos invested in Southern Tide in 2013, via its $715 million Brazos Equity Fund III. In a statement, Oxford, the Atlanta parent of Tommy Bahama and other brands, said it paid $85 million for Southern Tide.
2 min read · 20 April 2016
Bugcrowd Inc, the San Francisco developer of a crowdsourced tech-security platform, closed $15 million of Series B funding, led by Blackbird Ventures, the New South Wales, Australia, venture firm. Also signing on: new investors Industry Ventures and Salesforce Ventures as well as current investors Rally Ventures, Costanoa Venture Capital and Paladin Capital Group. Bugcrowd has now raised $24 million. Bugcrowd said that its Crowdcontrol system, adopted by major brands and Fortune 500 firms, enables its clients to uncover security bugs in their products. The efforts are driven by what it calls a “curated, vetted community of more than 27,000 security researchers.”
3 min read · 20 April 2016
