Private Equity Week Wire for Wednesday 11/7

BLUE BELL, PA — Locus Discovery Inc., a new computational drug design biopharmaceutical company, announced today that it has raised a total of $40 million in the company’s third round of preferred stock financing. The financing was completed in two phases. On September 7, 2001 Locus announced that it raised $28 million in the first closing of this Series D financing, and yesterday completed the second closing for an additional $12 million. A previous investor, Prism Venture Partners, made the major investment in this second close, with other existing and new investors also participating. Locus has now raised $88 million in three rounds of financing since September 1999.

NEW YORK — Venture-backed mergers and acquisitions activity remained at relatively stable levels in the third quarter, according to statistics from Venture Economics and the National Venture Capital Association.

Seventy deals were closed, down from 78 in the second quarter. However, the total value of disclosed deals increased over $800 million, while the average disclosed deal size increased to $74.6 million from $63.2 million. This represents the first upswing in deal values since the fourth quarter of 2000.

DALLAS — White Rock Networks, a leading provider of next-generation optical transport systems for the local metro transport market, today announced the completion of $60 million in third-round venture funding. This round brings the total funds raised by White Rock Networks to $102 million since its inception in 1999. In previous rounds, the company raised $12 million in February 2000, followed by $30 million in June 2000.

The latest round included pro-rata funding from previous round investors: Oak Investment Partners, Mayfield Fund, Meritech Capital and Hook Partners. New investors include Fremont Communications, Fremont Ventures, Investor AB (through its wholly owned subsidiary, Investor Growth Capital), Gulf International Bank, Cypress Semiconductor and Pacesetter Capital Group.

KIRKLAND, WA — Radiant Research Inc., one of the country’s largest site management organizations (SMO), today announced the successful completion of $28 million in total financing. Led by ABS Capital Partners, the funding includes all previous investors including Mayfield, Oak Investment Partners and Salix Ventures as well as the company’s senior lender, Heller Healthcare Finance.

WESTFORD, MA — Captivate Network, Inc., North America’s largest elevator media network, delivering programming and advertising to business professionals, today announced that it has closed a fourth round of equity financing for $17 million, bringing the total investment to $100 million. Recognizing Captivate’s solid record of achievement, ABS Capital Partners and OVP Venture Partners took the lead on this latest investment round.

SAN DIEGO — Ambit Biosciences Corp., a privately held drug discovery and development company, today announced the completion of its series B round of financing, raising $10 million. The investor group was led by Forward Ventures and included the Perseus-Soros Biopharmaceutical Fund LP, Avalon Ventures and Baker-Tisch Investments. This latest round of financing follows a $2 million seed round completed in December 2000. The capital raised will be used to further develop and commercialize ProteomeScan(TM), the Company’s proprietary chemistry-directed discovery platform.

AUSTIN, TEXAS — Surgient Networks, the leader in the convergence of networking, storage and computing functions, has secured an additional $18 million in equity and debt funding. Current investors, who continue to see the tremendous market potential of Surgient’s new eQualibrium(TM) architecture and eQ2500(TM) product platform, provided the additional equity. To date, Surgient has raised some $85 million in series A and B Funding.

NEW YORK — eDevice, a New York based start-up with R&Din Bordeaux, France specializing in embedded technologies for Internetconnectivity, today announced that it has completed $11.5 million inadditional equity financing. 3i, Europe’s venture capital leader, led theround with $6 million, joined by another new investor, French venturespecialists ABN AMRO. Initial investors Vertex Management and LCF Rothschildalso participated in the round.

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