VIENNA, May 7, 2025 — Dr. Werner Lanthaler, Founder and CEO of Wlanholding GmbH, has been appointed Chairman of the Supervisory Board at aTENSION.life, a high-tech life science startup developing precision diagnostics for hypertension. The appointment comes as part of a USD 3 million seed financing round led by Wlanholding, with eQventure and VP Venture Partners as co-lead investors.

aTENSION.life’s proprietary ALDO+ technology platform makes advanced mass spectrometry-based diagnostics accessible to patients with uncontrolled hypertension. The company’s first product, ALDO+PA, screens for primary aldosteronism, a significantly underdiagnosed condition affecting 5-10% of all hypertensive patients.

“Every hypertension patient deserves an early and precise diagnosis leading to a targeted treatment. This funding brings us one step closer in making clinical mass spectrometry diagnostics available to everyone,” states Dr. Lanthaler regarding his appointment at aTENSION.life.

The investment aligns with Dr. Lanthaler’s strategic focus on transformative technologies in the life sciences sector. Through Wlanholding, he continues to identify and support innovative companies addressing significant healthcare challenges. The ALDO+PA test is currently available in Austria through a partnership with labors.at and is planned to roll out across DACH markets by 2026, with first customers already implementing the technology in Germany, Switzerland, and the US.

aTENSION.life’s innovative approach addresses a vast global market, with approximately 1.3 billion adults affected by hypertension and 720 million not receiving adequate treatment due to underdiagnosis of specific hypertension subtypes.

Dr. Lanthaler will provide strategic guidance to aTENSION.life’s newly announced management team: Bernhard Klemen (CEO), Marko Poglitsch (CSO), and Katharina Wieser (CBO).

About Wlanholding GmbH

Wlanholding GmbH is a Family Office focused on investments and advisory services in life science and high-tech driven sustainability companies. Led by Dr. Werner Lanthaler, former CEO of Evotec SE, Wlanholding supports passionate founders and management teams to transform innovative businesses into scalable organizations with global impact. For more information, visit https://wlanholding.com/

About aTENSION.life

aTENSION.life is transforming hypertension care by making advanced mass spectrometry diagnostics accessible to everyone. The company’s ALDO+ technology platform sets new standards in precision diagnostics for hypertension, enabling targeted therapies with just one blood sample. For more information, visit www.atension.life.

Media Contact:

Mag. Katharina Wieser
Wlanholding GmbH
Schönborngasse 4, 1080 Vienna
[email protected], +436769633045
www.wlanholding.com

SOURCE Wlanholding GmbH

Cash subsidy valued at up to 1.22 billion PLN is one of the largest grants ever offered by Poland’s Ministry of Economic Development and Technology

WARSAW, Poland, May 7, 2025 — The Ministry of Economic Development and Technology in Poland today offered Ascend Elements up to USD $320 million to support construction of a sustainable precursor cathode active material (pCAM) manufacturing facility in Poland. pCAM is a high-value, precisely engineered material used in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and other advanced industrial applications. The cash subsidy of 1.22 billion Polish Zloty (PLN) is one of the largest grants ever offered by the Republic of Poland. As part of the E.U.’s Temporary Crisis and Transition Framework (TCTF), the grant is designed to support Europe’s transition to a net-zero economy.

“This offer of support from the Polish government marks a significant step forward in Ascend Elements’ European growth strategy,” said Linh Austin, President and CEO at Ascend Elements. “We are committed to building a sustainable battery materials supply chain on both sides of the Atlantic, and we greatly appreciate the Ministry’s offer of significant financial support.”

Ascend Elements has already identified a location in Poland for the construction of its first advanced battery materials (pCAM) manufacturing facility in Europe. CEO Linh Austin met with Poland’s Secretary of State Michał Jaros at the Polish Ministry of Economic Development and Technology in Warsaw on Wednesday to receive the grant offer.

“Battery sector projects are a key part of PAIH’s investment portfolio,” said Pawel Pudlowski, Ph.D., Vice President of the Management Board at the Polish Investment and Trade Agency (PAIH). “The Ascend Elements project is one of the largest U.S. investments in recent years, strengthening Poland’s role in the battery supply chain and supporting regional development, including technology development and cooperation with local educational institutions.”

Ascend Elements plans to commercialize its innovative technology for the manufacture of sustainable nickel, manganese, and cobalt (NMC) pCAM made from recycled lithium-ion battery materials at the new facility in Poland.

“We are deeply grateful for the support of the Polish government and thrilled to expand our presence in Europe,” said Tomasz Poznar, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Commercial at Ascend Elements.

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2681603/Ascend_Elements___Linh_Austin_and_Michal_Jaros.jpg

Logo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1930392/Ascend_Elements_Logo.jpg

Additional capital will fuel growth and product expansion to meet increasing demand as startups face a shifting economic landscape

SANTA MONICA, Calif., May 7, 2025 — SimpleClosure, the easiest and most trustworthy way to shut down your startup, today announced it has raised $15 million in fresh funding. Led by TTV Capital, the Series A round is a fast follow from its February 2024 seed round and includes participation from existing investors Infinity Ventures, Anthemis, Vera Equity, and new investors The LegalTech Fund and Carta, as well as additional angels. This new infusion of capital brings SimpleClosure’s total funding to more than $20 million at a time when startups are facing delayed IPOs, stalled M&A, and a potential new wave of shutdowns in an uncertain economy.

“The reality is that 90% of startups don’t make it, and shutting down remains the unspoken but necessary part of entrepreneurship. We hope companies never need us, but if they do, we’re here to help them do it the right way,” said Dori Yona, Founder and CEO of SimpleClosure. “Day in and out, our team builds with care, urgency, and a deep belief in the impact of what we are creating. This funding will help us grow faster, build smarter, and deliver even more value to the founders who rely on SimpleClosure when it matters most.”

Startups, VC-backed companies, and businesses of all sizes are facing mounting pressure from a challenging macroeconomic environment. Global trade tensions and renewed tariffs, coupled with rising interest rates and a greater cost of capital, are forcing founders to stretch their runway or focus on critical cost cutting measures. At the same time, amidst a less-friendly IPO environment, mergers and exits are making investors more cautious. Startups are also grappling with valuation resets after raising at inflated levels during recent boom years. This shift toward efficient growth over rapid scaling leaves companies that cannot quickly demonstrate sustainability to rethink their strategy entirely, which often includes shutting down.

SimpleClosure was founded with a simple but critical mission: to transform the painful and bureaucratic dissolution process so founders can focus on their next project. The company’s technology automates regulatory paperwork, legal filings, compliance, and investor communications, leveraging AI agents to bring order and transparency to an otherwise time-consuming and confusing process. By combining fintech, legal tech, and AI, SimpleClosure resolves any remaining obligations with customers, state agencies, and team members on behalf of the dissolving business. To date, more than 1,500 founders from companies of all sizes have wound down their businesses with SimpleClosure.

Since its public launch in September 2023, SimpleClosure has significantly scaled its operating efficiencies to meet growing demand and built out a world class team combining top R&D talent with legal and dissolution experts. 

The new infusion of capital will support the company’s continued growth, including product updates and integrations, to scale the platform and reach more founders and verticals during a time of heightened need. SimpleClosure was recently named to FastCompany’s Most Innovative Companies 2025 and is a winner of the 2024 LegalTech BreakThrough Awards.

“SimpleClosure quickly proved there is high demand for a platform that streamlines company dissolutions, saving businesses both time and money,” said Lizzie Hartley, partner at TTV Capital. “The company’s strong growth over the past year is a testament to the product that Dori and his team have built — one they wish they had when they were winding down their own startups. We are proud to support the SimpleClosure team as they continue to scale the business and meaningfully address the complexities of shutting down a company.”

About SimpleClosure
SimpleClosure was founded with a simple but critical mission: to make a complicated and confusing shutdown process feel like a manageable reality — the unlock founders were looking for. We handle the paperwork, legal filings, and compliance. This is our sole focus, and we make sure it gets done right. Our team of specialists are dedicated to helping founders fast-track their shutdown, so they can focus on the future. To learn more, please visit www.simpleclosure.com. 

Media Contact:
[email protected]

SOURCE SimpleClosure

Investment led by UPMC Enterprises, with participation from MemorialCare Innovation Fund, Rex Health Ventures, Tampa General Hospital Ventures, Memorial Hermann Health System, Frist Cressey Ventures, Storm Ventures, Paramark Ventures, CU Healthcare Innovation Fund, and Mass General Brigham Ventures

SAN FRANCISCO, May 7, 2025 — Carta Healthcare, a leading provider of AI-powered clinical data abstraction, today announced it has secured $18.25 million in Series B1 financing. This investment will accelerate the company’s growth as demand surges among health systems and life sciences organizations for AI-driven innovation that transforms clinical data into valuable insights.

The investment was led by UPMC Enterprises, with participation from new strategic investors, including MemorialCare Innovation Fund, Rex Health Ventures (the investment fund for the UNC Health), Tampa General Hospital Ventures and support from existing investors Memorial Hermann Health System, Frist Cressey Ventures, Storm Ventures, Paramark Ventures, CU Healthcare Innovation Fund, and Mass General Brigham Ventures.

“UPMC Enterprises invests in companies that are solving real problems in healthcare delivery,” said Brent Burns, executive vice president at UPMC Enterprises, the innovation, commercialization and venture capital arm of UPMC. “Health systems face significant challenges associated with clinical data abstraction and patient trial matching, which are time-consuming, labor-intensive processes. Carta Healthcare leverages AI to streamline data abstraction and provide analytics that clinicians can use to improve patient care. We look forward to partnering with Carta Healthcare to advance their mission and explore opportunities to implement their solutions across our health system.”

The new funding will enable Carta Healthcare to further expand its growing customer footprint, particularly in the life sciences market, following the late 2024 acquisition of Realyze Intelligence from UPMC Enterprises. Realyze Intelligence’s technology leverages AI to rapidly analyze structured and unstructured data and identify specific patients that match clinical trials and other research studies.

“We have long recognized that better clinical data abstraction and activation is integral to improving healthcare,” said Navid Farzad, Managing Partner at Frist Cressey Ventures. “Since our initial investment, Carta has been laser focused on solving this challenge for health systems by using the Carta Healthcare AI platform to automate the data abstraction process, generating high-quality clinical data while simultaneously realizing an immediate ROI by reducing the high labor cost of data abstraction.”

“As a community-focused health system, we’re always looking to invest in new digital technologies that will enable us to better meet the diverse needs of our patients in the Greater Houston area, while also supporting our providers and physician partners,” said Feby Abraham, executive vice president and chief strategy officer for Memorial Hermann Health System. “Our vision is to create healthier communities, now and for generations to come. By partnering with Carta Healthcare, we are investing in a platform that will help us drive innovation and provide the best care possible for our patients.”

Founded in 2017, Carta Healthcare has pioneered innovative approaches to clinical data abstraction and healthcare analytics. The company’s technology combines AI, machine learning, and deep clinical expertise to automate the collection and analysis of clinical data, enabling healthcare organizations to generate actionable insights that drive quality improvement initiatives.

“This significant investment from leading health systems further validates and empowers our mission to harness the power of data, ensuring that care teams and researchers have the information they need, when they need it,” said Carta Healthcare CEO Brent Dover. “With their support and adoption of our solutions, we can continue to expand upon our deep clinical domain expertise, scale our operations and product deployment, and activate their structured and unstructured data as close to real time as possible to support process improvement and quality initiatives.”

Carta Healthcare CFO Lucas Tanner said the latest investment round supports a financially healthy company.

“We’ve demonstrated consistent year-over-year growth by focusing on delivering measurable value to healthcare systems,” he added. “This new capital will allow us to scale our team and infrastructure to meet increasing market demand. With a strengthened balance sheet and critical insights from industry-leading strategic investors, we are well-positioned to capture the significant market opportunity ahead of us.”

For more information about Carta Healthcare and its solutions, visit www.carta.healthcare.

About Carta Healthcare
At Carta Healthcare, we believe that high-quality data is the foundation for better healthcare outcomes. Traditional methods for abstracting data from clinical systems are often labor-intensive, time-consuming, and costly. As the leading provider of clinical data management solutions, Carta Healthcare leverages advanced artificial intelligence and a team of expert clinical professionals to deliver accurate, high-quality, and actionable clinical data that drives healthcare improvements. By streamlining data abstraction, Carta Healthcare significantly reduces costs and enhances operational efficiency for hospitals and health systems. Recognized for its innovation with accolades such as the Merit Award, Pinnacle Award, and BIG Innovation Awards, Carta Healthcare is transforming the future of healthcare data management. Discover more at https://www.carta.healthcare/

Media contact:
Katlyn Nesvold
Amendola Communications for Carta Healthcare
[email protected]

SOURCE Carta Healthcare

Backed by Emerald Development Managers, AgFunder, and MANN+HUMMEL, Uviquity aims to revolutionize air, food, and water disinfection with its chip-scale far-UVC light sources

RALEIGH, N.C., May 7, 2025 — Uviquity, a deep tech startup pioneering next-generation photonic disinfection technologies, today announced it has emerged from stealth with $6.6 million in seed funding. The round was led by Emerald Development Managers, an early-stage venture capital firm specializing in deep tech, with participation from AgFunder and MANN+HUMMEL, global leaders in food and agriculture venture capital and advanced filtration solutions.

Uviquity is developing solid-state far-UVC (200-230 nm) semiconductor light sources designed to deliver safe, continuous, and chemical-free disinfection for air, food, and water applications. The funding will support Uviquity’s research and development efforts, accelerating the productization of its core technology—a proprietary photonic integrated circuit that couples blue laser light into frequency-doubling waveguides, enabling a scalable, single-chip far-UVC solution that can fit on the tip of your finger and seamlessly integrate into a wide variety of applications using standard photonic packages.

“We believe far-UVC light is the future of pathogen control—and Uviquity’s wide-bandgap semiconductor platform is the key to making it practical, scalable, and safe,” said Scott Burroughs, CEO and co-founder of Uviquity. “This funding allows us to bring our vision to life and unlock a new standard for clean air, safe food, and pure water—at scale and without chemicals.”

A Safer, More Effective Way to Disinfect

Unlike conventional UV-C solutions, far-UVC light has been proven safe for continuous exposure to human skin and eyes while rapidly inactivating all known pathogens, including viruses, bacteria, fungi, and mold spores. Until now, far-UVC systems have relied on bulky gas-discharge lamps with limited scalability and reliability.

Uviquity’s chip-based semiconductor approach represents a paradigm shift, offering a compact, energy-efficient, and durable solution that can be integrated into light fixtures, air handling systems, food packaging and processing equipment, agricultural crop protection systems, water purification systems, and consumer appliances.

Broad Applications, Global Impact

Uviquity’s solid-state far-UVC platform opens the door to a wide range of transformative applications:

• Air disinfection in public and private spaces, providing invisible, always-on protection from airborne illnesses
• Pesticide-free crop protection, enabling healthier and more sustainable agriculture
• Chemical-free water purification, delivering clean water at any scale without harmful byproducts

“With its proven team and novel technology, Uviquity fits perfectly with our goal to invest in exceptional companies that are solving real problems,” said Cy Schroeder of Emerald Development Managers. “We believe Uviquity’s semiconductor approach to far-UVC will revolutionize how the world handles disinfection.”

About Uviquity

Founded in 2022 by a team of scientists, engineers, and photonics experts, Uviquity is on a mission to develop and commercialize technology to improve the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the water we drink. By harnessing the power of solid-state far-UVC light, Uviquity enables continuous, safe, and sustainable protection from pathogens across multiple industries.

For more information, visit www.uviquity.com.

SOURCE Uviquity Inc.

Also announces $15M Series A funding and four Global InfoSec Awards at RSA Conference

NEW YORK, May 7, 2025 — Jericho Security, a leader in AI-powered cybersecurity training and conversational phishing defense, today announced the launch of its new self-service experience on Jericho’s agentic AI platform, giving organizations of any size instant access to AI-powered conversational phishing simulations. This launch coincides with Jericho’s $15M Series A funding round and recognition at RSA Conference 2025, where the company took home four Global InfoSec Awards.

The Series A funding round was led by Jasper Lau of Era Fund, with participation from Lux Capital, Dash, Gaingels Enterprise and Gaingels AI, Distique, Plug & Play, Henry, Metalab, Fog, Scrum Ventures, KBTG, and Textbook. The funding will accelerate go-to-market efforts and R&D, including further expansion of Jericho’s agentic AI platform.

“AI-powered phishing threats are getting more personalized, more believable, and more scalable — and that means every organization needs fast, intelligent defenses,” said Sage Wohns, CEO of Jericho Security. “With our self-service experience on our platform, we’re giving companies immediate access to the same high-fidelity simulations that Fortune 500s rely on, with a frictionless way to try, buy, and grow.”

Agentic AI, built to mimic the sophistication of real attackers, powers Jericho’s conversational phishing simulations and trains users to detect advanced social engineering attacks. These include conversational phishing emails, real-time SMS scams, and manipulative dialogue-based intrusions, giving organizations the ability to train their employees on a wide variety of attack vectors.

The new self-service experience includes three flexible subscription tiers — Jericho Lite, Jericho Plus, and Jericho Premium — making conversational phishing simulation and cybersecurity readiness accessible in minutes. With powerful customization options, dynamic threat simulations and deep employee performance insights, Jericho’s agentic AI platform helps teams stay ahead of evolving threats. Stripe-powered checkout and flexible seat management ensure that getting started (or scaling up) is as seamless as the product experience itself.

Companies can now start a 7-day free trial of Jericho Premium instantly, with no sales calls or demos required. The experience includes advanced voice, SMS, and email phishing simulations, customizable training flows, and in-depth performance analytics — all powered by Jericho’s proprietary conversational agentic AI platform.

Security leaders at RSA 2025 have emphasized a growing consensus: AI might drive the next wave of threats, but it’s humans who will stop them. Empowering the front line is now a top priority.

That urgency — and Jericho’s leadership in addressing these concerns — were recognized with four Global InfoSec Awards from Cyber Defense Magazine:

• Market Innovator – AI Security Solution
• Trailblazer – Anti-Phishing
• Most Advanced – Cybersecurity Training
• Trailblazing – Cybersecurity Awareness

“These honors validate what our team has known all along: that next-gen threats require next-gen training,” said Wohns. “We’re proud to be leading the charge with agentic AI and empowering organizations everywhere to fight back — intelligently, instantly, and at scale.”

To learn more about our funding announcement, visit our blog or start your 7 day free trial.

About Jericho Security
Jericho Security is a leading provider of AI-powered cybersecurity training solutions, specializing in defense against advanced social engineering threats such as conversational phishing and deepfake attacks. Using agentic AI, Jericho provides realistic simulations across email, voice, and SMS — preparing teams to detect and stop real-world attacks.

Media Contact:
May Calceta Wong
Head of Marketing
[email protected]

SOURCE Jericho Security

LONDON and NEW YORK, May 7, 2025 — Wonderskin, the innovative beauty brand behind TikTok’s viral peel-off Wonder Blading Lip Stain Masque and many other award-winning, disruptive, tech-infused cosmetic products, has secured a $50 million minority investment in its Series A funding round. The round was led by Insight Partners, a top-tier global venture capital and private equity firm known for backing high growth companies, including Shopify, Quince, Prose, The Farmer’s Dog and more*. 

This investment marks a pivotal step in Wonderskin’s next chapter, enabling it to accelerate retail expansion and product innovation. The brand continues to disrupt traditional beauty models with a social-first mindset, out-of-the-box marketing, and a relentless focus on technology-driven performance. With headquarters in London, an in-house lab, and majority of manufacturing based in the United States, Wonderskin continues to set a new standard for performance-led innovation in beauty.

“Welcoming one of the most iconic firms in growth equity to join us on this journey speaks to the strength of our innovation, our team, and our vision,” said Michael Malinsky, Co-Founder & CEO of Wonderskin. “The resources, expertise, and strategic guidance Insight brings will help us forge the next-generation beauty company.”

Wonderskin rose to global recognition with its Wonder Blading Lip Stain Masque, a category-defining, peel-off lip color powered by patented technology, but the brand’s success extends far beyond one viral product. Its expanding portfolio of long-wear, multi-use innovations, each combining proprietary science with real-world results, continues to build momentum and category leadership.

“We believe Wonderskin is reshaping the beauty landscape with patented innovation, bold product design, and a deep connection to today’s consumer,” said Rebecca Liu-Doyle, Managing Director at Insight Partners. “Their ability to fuse science, creativity, and cultural relevance is rare—and we’re excited to support them as they build the next iconic beauty brand.”

With several new category launches on the horizon, Wonderskin remains committed to pushing boundaries and delivering bold, high-performance products that surprise and delight at every touchpoint.

About Wonderskin
Wonderskin is a trailblazing beauty brand, with a true Cosmetics Laboratory at its heart. The chemists, scientists and formulators are focused on one thing: disrupting conventional beauty by innovating entirely new categories, tech-infused formulas and transformational results that become unforgettable, game-changing experiences for real people. Famous for its Wonder Blading patented technology, which has propelled the company to the forefront of the Lip Stain category, Wonderskin has cultivated a hyper-loyal, digitally native community around the brand. New launches in the Brow and Eye categories have already won awards and attracted attention from celebrity make-up artists, global media, and TikTok beauty aficionados. For more information, visit wonderskin.com or @wonderskin on Instagram and TikTok.

About Insight Partners 

Insight Partners is a global software investor partnering with high-growth technology, software, and Internet startup and ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. As of September 30, 2024, the firm has over $90B in regulatory assets under management. Insight Partners has invested in more than 800 companies worldwide and has seen over 55 portfolio companies achieve an IPO. Headquartered in New York City, Insight has offices in London, Tel Aviv, and the Bay Area. Insight’s mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with tailored, hands-on software expertise along their growth journey, from their first investment to IPO. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit insightpartners.com or follow us on X @insightpartners. 

* For information on all of Insight’s investments, please visit insightpartners.com/portfolio.

Media Contact:

5WPR
[email protected] 
212-999-5585

SOURCE Wonderskin

The round, which brings OX’s total funding to $94M, is led by DTCP, with participation from IBM Ventures, Microsoft, Swisscom Ventures, Evolution Equity and Team8

NEW YORK, May 7, 2025 — OX Security, a leader in Application Security, today announced $60 million in Series B funding. The round was led by DTCP, with participation from IBM Ventures, Microsoft, Swisscom Ventures, Evolution Equity Partners, and Team8. The company, which enables organizations to focus developers on the 5% of Application Security risks that matter, hit $10 million in sales and more than tripled its customer base over the past year.

Software development is accelerating at an unprecedented pace, driven both by AI-generated code and traditional human engineering. AI systems can produce clean-looking code at incredible speed, but often hide structural flaws that are difficult to detect. Meanwhile, conventional development continues to create complex systems that pose their own risks. This surge in software creation is overwhelming traditional Application Security (AppSec) tools, which flood teams with alerts but fail to identify which vulnerabilities pose real-world threats.

“As AI-generated code becomes the new normal, the risks it introduces are often hidden beneath seemingly innocuous code, flaws that traditional security tools are not built to detect,” said Neatsun Ziv, CEO and Co-Founder of OX Security. “OX is pioneering agentic code review, powered by AI and enhanced with critical thinking modules that mimic the judgment of top security engineers. By continuously modeling risk across both AI and human-generated code, we identify and prioritize the vulnerabilities that actually matter.”

OX’s platform enables precise, evidence-based risk prioritization throughout the software development lifecycle, highlighting the real-world impact of vulnerabilities and empowering teams to focus exclusively on critical threats. By eliminating the noise of non-critical issues, OX dramatically improves organizations’ risk posture while saving millions in wasted developer hours.

Today, OX is trusted by over 200 organizations, including Microsoft, IBM, eToro, and SoFi.

“Any security tool can find endless vulnerabilities and issue a nonstop stream of alerts,” added Ziv. “We’re here to tell you which specific vulnerabilities will actually get you breached – and make it painfully clear what to fix first. We built OX to solve the real AppSec problem: not finding issues, but knowing which ones matter. That’s what gets buy-in from developers, that’s what prevents breaches – and that’s why the market is finally ready for change.”

“OX is the precision blade that slices through the noise of endless vulnerabilities, empowering organizations to zero in on the critical 5% that truly matter,” said Dean Shahar, Managing Director at DTCP. “This is a true paradigm shift – OX’s code projection and precise prioritization finally deliver on the broken promises of legacy security tools, whose flood of alerts has become their Achilles’ heel. As GenAI accelerates code creation beyond human scale, OX unifies fragmented AppSec solutions into a single, cohesive platform, delivering laser-sharp accuracy to secure the ever-expanding attack surface.”

The new funding, which brings OX’s total raised to $94 million, will be used to accelerate product innovation, expand the company’s global footprint, and continue helping enterprises move from reactive security to measurable risk reduction.

About OX Security

OX Security is an Application Security Platform that enables evidence-based risk prioritization across the entire software development lifecycle — from design to runtime. Founded in 2021 by Neatsun Ziv and Lior Arzi in the wake of the SolarWinds attack, OX was built to cut through the noise of generic alerts and help teams focus on the 5% of risks that truly matter. Its proprietary technology assesses exploitability, reachability, and business impact, ensuring that critical vulnerabilities are addressed before they reach runtime.

Media Contact
[email protected]

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2680479/Lior_Arzi_and_Neatsun_Ziv.jpg

SOURCE Ox Security

–Series B co-led by MRL Ventures Fund (MRLV) and Bayland Capital, with participation from Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC Inc., LAV Fund, BioTrack Capital, and Sherpa Health Partners–

–First patient dosed in Phase 1 clinical study of lead candidate PT0253, a potent, selective KRAS G12D degrader–

BURLINGTON, Mass., May 7, 2025 — PAQ Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing best- and first-in-class KRAS degraders for patients with lethal cancers lacking effective treatment options, today announced the completion of its $39 million Series B funding. The Series B round was co-led by Bayland Capital and MRL Ventures Fund (MRLV), with participation from Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc. (JJDC), LAV Fund, BioTrack Capital, and existing investor Sherpa Health Partners.

The capital raised will fund PAQ’s next stage of clinical development for the company’s lead asset PT0253, a potent and selective degrader of KRAS G12D, a known driver for a range of solid tumors. PT0253 has demonstrated best-in-class potential based on preclinical comparison to existing agents currently in clinical development targeting the same KRAS mutant. In Q1 2025, the first patient was dosed in a Phase 1 study to assess its safety and tolerability.

“The successful completion of our Series B funding and rapid enrollment of our Phase 1 trial in the US for PT0253 mark significant steps forward in our clinical development efforts,” said Nan Ji, PhD, PAQ’s co-founder, President, and CEO. “The strong support from our investors validates the potential of our innovative approach. We now turn our focus to executing a robust clinical development plan while continuing to develop a differentiated pipeline of KRAS degraders.”

The funds will also support the advancement of the company’s second asset through IND-enabling studies.

“PAQ represents a compelling opportunity to develop transformative therapies for oncology populations with high unmet need,” said Olga Danilchanka, Partner, MRLV, the therapeutics-focused corporate venture arm of Merck & Co. “Their innovative efforts advancing the targeted protein degradation modality aligns with our commitment to backing scientifically rigorous teams that tackle pressing medical challenges. We’re confident in PAQ’s ability to unlock the full potential of KRAS degraders and are proud to support their journey toward achieving clinical impact.”

“The team at PAQ is at the forefront of an innovative approach to treat some of the most underserved patient populations in oncology,” said Yuexing Su, Founding Partner, Bayland Capital. “We were attracted to PAQ based on its scientific approach, preclinical data, and experienced leadership team. We believe there is tremendous potential for KRAS degraders and are excited to be part of PAQ’s next stage of growth.”

PAQ Therapeutics was founded in 2020 and completed a $30M Series A financing in 2021. Over the last three years, the PAQ team gained proprietary understanding of KRAS biology, which guided medicinal chemistry to identify KRAS degraders. These programs have the potential to address key limitations of clinical-stage KRAS inhibitors, offering more effective and durable treatments.

About PAQ Therapeutics
PAQ Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing best- and first-in-class KRAS degraders for lethal cancers lacking effective treatment options.

Media Contact:
Peg Rusconi, Deerfield Group
[email protected]

SOURCE PAQ Therapeutics