ACADEMIA

Teranode Corporation, the leading innovator of experiment design automation (XDA) software for the Life Sciences industry, today announced that it has closed a $9.5 million Series B round in financing. The round, which brings the company's total funding to over $12.1 million, was led by Cargill Ventures and Trident Capital, with reinvestment by Series A investors Ignition Partners and WRF Capital. Teranode plans to use the funds to expand sales and consulting channels in major biopharma hubs in North America and Europe. Teranode also plans to use the funds for expansion of the company's product with new infrastructure to support translational medicine, as well as establishing a solid developer program for VARs and technology partnerships. "Teranode's platform fundamentally transforms how biological and chemical experiments are conducted, by accelerating and integrating design, measurement, and analysis," said Paul Bieganski, Teranode board member and Managing Director of Cargill Ventures. "It has the potential to change the efficiency of experimentation in this biotech era." Teranode's informatics platform, TERANODE XDA, combines computational chemistry and biology with lab data to automate tasks associated with the lifecycle of experimentation. The platform's core application is TERANODE Design Suite, a visual tool for scientists that allows in-silico and lab experiments to be designed, automated, analyzed, and published for the benefit of accelerated R&D. "We continue to be impressed by the quality of the Teranode management team and their ability to help large biopharma projects cost-effectively manage the processes and data involved in the drug discovery process," said Cameron Myhrvold, General Partner and Co-founder of Ignition Partners. "We are pleased with Teranode's Series A accomplishments and impressed with the quality of the new investors Teranode has attracted. Cargill Ventures and Trident Capital will be strong contributors on the expanded board." During Series A, Teranode was recognized by Red Herring magazine as being in the Top 100 startups in December of 2004 and as a Cool Company by Gartner Group in March 2005. Since then, Teranode has won recognition of its technology leadership with two awards from Frost & Sullivan for technology leadership both in bioinformatics and laboratory information management systems. "Our Series B financing is significant on two fronts. First to our customers, the Series B financing reduces their risks of innovating by providing long-term financial viability for Teranode," said Joe Duncan, CEO and Chairman of Teranode. "Second to the broader market, Series B gives us an expanded and experienced board along with resources to realize the original vision behind Teranode which is to revolutionize the role computing plays in Life Sciences."