Illumina Accelerator Locks in $40 Million to Back Startups

Illumina (ILMN) Accelerator Locks in $40 Million to Back Startups
February 26, 2015
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Sr. Editor

Bioinformatics behemoth Illumina said Thursday that its Illumina Accelerator has secured a $40 million initial capital commitment from private equity shop Viking Global, as it attempts to bring new and innovative new startups focused on genomics into the marketplace.

The financing will be administered via the company’s Illumina Accelerator Boost Capital and will be structured as a dollar-for-dollar match funding for every Accelerator graduate that raises between $1 million to $5 million during each six-month funding cycle.

Accelerators are all the rage in the startup world, but have particularly caught fire with biotech and pharma in recent years, with companies as large as Johnson and Johnson creating “farm team” systems to fund the hottest nascent ideas and technology out there.

“This capital commitment will be instrumental in driving value for our startups as they advance breakthrough applications in genomics,” said Amanda Cashin, head of Illumina Accelerator.

Illumina’s program picks select startups and then provides them with seed investment, business guidance, access to Illumina’s sequencing systems and reagents, and fully operational lab space in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Each startup then six months to fund their ideas and, theoretically, prepare them for either and exit to a larger company, or rollout to the larger market.

In October, Illumina named its first three startups to go through its Accelerator program: Encoded Genomics, a biopharma decoding the human genome for functional elements with therapeutic properties; EpiBiome, an agriculture technology company developing bacteriophage compositions to prevent and treat mastitis infections in dairy cattle; and Xcell Biosciences, a research tools and diagnostics company focused on commercializing its cell culture solution.

That has private equity players and venture capitalists, both private and via large investment vehicles like hedge funds, exciting to get in at the ground floor level.

“We are proud to partner with Viking Global Investors,” said Mostafa Ronaghi, Illumina’s senior vice president and chief technology officer. “As we continue to support innovation and entrepreneurship, we believe this committed capital will further boost the genomics innovation ecosystem.”

Viking Global Investors has offices in Greenwich, Conn., New York, Hong Kong and London and has more than $30 billion in capital.



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