Photo courtesy of Dr. Farouk at Flickr Creative Commons.
Synaptive Medical has announced that it has received $900,000 in a recent equity round. The financing came from six anonymous sources, according to the company’s SEC filing.
This investment caps off a very successful 2016 during which Synaptive received an undisclosed amount of money from growth investment firm General Atlantic and $3.7 million in October from 18 unnamed investors.
The amount of money received by Synaptive shows the depth of interest in the growing medical technology field. The company won regulatory approval in Canada and the United States for its BrightMatter brain imaging system, which provides 3-D visuals of the brain in the operating room to help guide surgeons. This approval has clearly driven the interest in investing in Synaptive.
Typically, as part of equity investments, investors receive positions on the company’s board of directors. In the case of General Atlantic, managing director Alex Crisses is joining the board as a full member, and principal David Caluori is joining as an observer.
“We are excited to partner with Synaptive’s passionate team, whose commitment to innovation, engagement with surgeons, and passion for patient care, has built an incredibly unique suite of products,” Caluori said.
“Synaptive marks the first investment by General Atlantic in the medical device sector, which speaks volumes to the attractive market opportunity we see in the healthcare technology industry,” added Crisses.
The medical device field is seeing a great deal of interest from venture capital firms, too. After a disappointing 2015 during which the field had a 13 percent year-over-year drop, early-stage investing in the field is rising again. In 2016, the three most active VC firms in the field—NEA, Versant Ventures, and High-Tech Gründerfonds—invested in a total of 73 medical device and biomedical startups.
NEA has invested in a number of medical device businesses, including EarLens, which has built a light-based hearing aid; CVRx, which has developed an implantable device to help lower blood pressure; and Spine Wave, which makes devices to be used in spinal surgeries.
Versant Ventures recently took part in two Series F rounds for Minerva Surgical, which has created an FDA-approved endometrial ablation system to treat heavy menstrual bleeding; and Benvenue Medical, a developer of spinal implants and other devices for spinal surgery.
Among other investments, High-Tech Gründerfonds recently contributed to diagnostic equipment developer SeNostic’s seed round and provided early capital to Abviris, which offers a cancer screening program for early detection of HPV-induced mouth and throat cancer.
Currently, the global medical technology industry is worth nearly $400 billion. The investments these companies are making shows the faith they have that the field’s worth is only going to increase.
