Mintz Venture Watch — Volume 7: A Report on Deal Trends from Q1 and Q2 2024

        
Venture Capital Transactions in the first half of 2024: 

Although the emerging company market has been relatively depressed due to the downward pressure of a repricing environment, the Mintz Venture Capital & Emerging Companies team has remained incredibly busy, structuring and advising companies from term sheet to closing. For the first half of 2024, we completed 73 transactions, with an aggregate deal value in excess of $980 million.

Below are a few highlighted transactions across our various industry practice areas:

Technology

Mintz serves as the primary legal counsel to SYN Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on the cyber-security sector. Under the leadership of former Blackstone CISO, Jay Leek, and former Executive Chairman & CEO of RSA, Art Coviello, SYN and its high-powered team invest primarily in early-stage cyber-security companies. SYN has two flagship funds and a newer Series Seed fund, for which Mintz recently represented SYN in its fund formation, and Mintz has acted as fund formation counsel for SYN as well.

In the first six months of 2024, Mintz advised SYN Ventures on seven financings:

1. $11.2 million financing for RegScale, Inc.;

2. $4.5 million financing in Conifers Technologies, Inc.’s Series Seed round;

3. $10 million convertible note financing for ShiftLeft, Inc. dba Qwiet AI;

4. $5 million Series Seed financing for BreachRx;

5. $11 million financing for Predimya, Inc.;

6. $2.7 million financing in Synqly, Inc.’s SAFE financing; and

7. $5 million Series A investment in Metabase Q, Inc.

Life Sciences

Mintz advised Synnovation Therapeutics, a precision medicine company developing small molecule therapies to improve the lives of cancer patients, in its $102M Series A financing. The financing was led by Third Rock Ventures. Proceeds of the funds will be put towards the advancement of the company’s clinical and preclinical pipeline.

Founded and managed by a distinguished medical chemistry team, Synnovation’s leadership has an extensive history of successful drug development. The team hopes to continue to use their expertise to improve patient outcomes and address any liabilities in existing standards of care, ultimately transforming cancer care.

Energy & Sustainability

Mintz advised Quaise Energy, a developer of a new hybrid deep drilling technology for geothermal energy, in its $21 million Series A1 funding round. The deal brings Quaise’s total funding to more than $95 million. The investment will be used to scale up Quaise’s supply chain and enhance its field operations by improving geologic understanding at plant sites.

Quaise projects use novel technology to harness deep geothermal energy, which could provide an essential solution in the transition toward global clean energy. In 2018, the company spun out of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center and is now aiming to establish its first commercial pilot plants.

For further inquiries, please contact the co-chairs of the Venture Capital & Emerging Companies practice: Daniel I. DeWolf, Samuel Asher Effron, and/or Jeremy D. Glaser.

You can also ask us anything at http://mintzedge.com/ask-anything/. We built the MintzEdge website as a resource for entrepreneurs and investors, and hope that all of you take advantage of the site and see how it can help you.

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