[May 01, 2015] |
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NeuroVigil Closes Second Financing Round
Leading Neurotechnology company NeuroVigil announced today that it
completed a second financing round in which in the Company issued equity
securities at a pre-money valuation that was over two-and-a-half times
the post-money valuations of the Series A financing rounds of Google and
Facebook (News - Alert), combined, for less than 0.5% of its common stock. The
company's 2011 seed financing round, wherein NeuroVigil sold less than
2% of its common stock, was at a pre-money valuation that was over twice
the combined seed valuations of Google (News - Alert) and Facebook. "I continue to be
impressed with the way NeuroVigil has met and exceeded its milestones,"
said noted seed investor Dr. Howard Morgan, who led this financing
round. Co-investors include space entrepreneur Elon Musk, venture
capitalist Tim Draper, and venture capital firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson
(DFJ) and Zone Ventures. "Companies like NeuroVigil and entrepreneurs of
Dr. Low's intellect and bold vision embody DFJ's mission to identify,
serve, and provide capital for extraordinary entrepreneurs anywhere who
are determined to change the world … The societal returns on believing
in Dr. Low and NeuroVigil are well worth any investment," remarked Tim
Draper, managing director of DFJ.
NeuroVigil was bootstrapped during the Great Recession by its chairman
and CEO, Dr. Philip Low, who owns about 89% of the company, which he
founded when he was a graduate student in computational neuroscience at
the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and whose PhD work on
non-invasive brain biomarker extraction, summarized in a one-page
thesis, led to the formation of NeuroVigil. "To paraphrase nuclear
physicist Ernest Rutherford: 'We had no money, so we had to think,'"
said Dr. Low who decided at the time to postpone entry into the consumer
space and instead forge alliances with the pharmaceutical industry to
generate cash flow and significant intellectual property, tus opting to
forgo traditional consumer-driven venture capital support in favor of an
aggressive multifaceted science-based strategy combining algorithms,
devices and database technology. The mathematical formalism created by
Dr. Low, including the SPEARS algorithm, enabled NeuroVigil to extract
higher bandwidth from a single non-invasive electroencephalogram (EEG)
channel and to dramatically reduce its footprint. This capability,
combined with a wireless connectivity, provided the company with the
potential to track a large number of people (whether on Earth or
astronauts in space), thus making it easy to broaden the research
population and monitor human brain activity with high precision and
throughput and without encumbering subjects. "Philip discovered a
fundamentally new way to assess brain activity … This technology is
having tremendous impact," recalled Nobel (News - Alert) Laureate and Salk Institute
Interim President Emeritus, Dr. Roger Guillemin.
The company was launched in 2007 and is responsible for the iBrain™
portable brain monitor that has been used since 2009 by the
pharmaceutical industry (i.e. companies like Roche and Novartis) to
gather data from the brain in clinical trials for research purposes,
including from children with autism and outpatients. Typically
NeuroVigil owns all the intellectual property and biomarkers generated
from such collaborations including any generated by its clients and has
access to an international portfolio of pending and granted patents. The
company has also launched in 2011, at the request of NeuroVigil advisor
and theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, a program to help individuals
with ALS communicate by thought alone, and has developed substantial
intellectual property on this topic. In 2013, an ALS sufferer was able
to spell a word using this non-invasive technology, which is still being
further refined. "Dr. Low and his company have done some outstanding
work in this field," observed Stephen Hawking. In 2015, NeuroVigil
attracted significant interest from the senior care industry and is in
negotiations with the largest senior care industry operators to monitor
thousands of seniors as they progress from mild cognitive impairment to
dementia. An initial contract has already been signed.
"Neurotechnology is here to stay, and NeuroVigil is excited by the
awesome opportunity to keep doing good for the world and well for its
shareholders," said Dr. Low, NeuroVigil's, Founder, Chairman & CEO.
ABOUT NEUROVIGIL. NeuroVigil is a world leader in neurotechnology and
computational neuroscience, and is dedicated to the betterment of the
human condition by merging non-invasive wireless brain recording
technology with advanced computational analysis techniques applied
exclusively on human data. The award-winning company has developed
proprietary technology which leverages the dynamic oscillations produced
across the sleep/wake cycle in order to systematically scan the human
brain for signs of pathologic activity, years in advance of cognitive or
behavioral symptoms. The company, headquartered in La Jolla, California,
has an active program on assistive neurotechnologies based at the NASA
Research Park, in Mountain View, California. For more information,
please visit: http://www.neurovigil.com or
contact [email protected].
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