Oxyntix, a spinout from the Engineering Department of the University of Oxford, has closed an investment round of £1 million that will fund an ‘ambitious’ research programme.
Oxyntix, a spinout from the Engineering Department of the University of Oxford, has closed an investment round of £1 million that will fund an ‘ambitious’ research programme.
IP Group, the main market-listed developer of intellectual property (IP)-based businesses, led the investment in the company, which is a first for the firm as part of its alliance with medical-focused venture capital fund Technikos.
IP Group will invest up to £400,000 into Oxyntix in two tranches with the second payment conditional on certain milestones being achieved. IP Group’s investment will give the firm a 21.4 per cent stake in Oxyntix if the second equity stake is pursued.
Parkwalk Advisors and a number of angel investors also participated in the financing round.
Oxyntix’s scientists are proposing a new method of achieving extreme intensity bubble collapse, which the company claims has a number of potential applications, most notably in nuclear fusion power generation and in sonochemistry.
Yiannis Ventikos, a professor at Oxford University and a co-founder of the company, comments, ‘I am delighted that such an agile and flexible funding structure has been put together. It allows us to develop further this very ambitious research programme in a timely manner; especially given the stakes this work entails and the constraints in funding that research faces, in the UK but worldwide as well.’
IP Group announced in January that it had broadened its relationship with the University of Oxford through the acquisition of a strategic stake and alliance with Technikos, a technology fund with a long-term commercialisation agreement with the University of Oxford’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME). IP Group already has a long-term commercialisation agreement with the University of Oxford’s Department of Chemistry.
Founded in 2001, IP Group listed on AIM in October 2003 and moved to the main market in June 2006.
