DCVC 2024 Q2 update: Oklo rings up new business — and NYSE opening bell on its successful public listing; Fervo stays hot; Agility keeps proving its ability; Radionetics links up with Lilly; DCVC in DC for Defense

Greetings, friends of DCVC!

Q2 saw our portfolio companies working effectively and with purpose — toward the reversal of climate change, better medicine and health care, higher efficiency across industries, and in the staunch defense of democracy. Our current thinking on all this and more is codified and given color in the second annual DCVC Deep Tech Oppor­tu­ni­ties Report, which we’ll release this summer, hammock not included.

A few highlights from our flagship funds: great commercial traction continued for Agility Robotics (whose humanoid robot is the only one doing real work for revenue at major customers) — it partnered with Manhattan Associates to integrate Digit and Agility Arc with the Manhattan Active Warehouse Management solution and signed a multi-year agreement with GXO to begin deploying Digit in GXO’s logistics operations (see Agility’s CEO, Peggy Johnson, on CNBC’s Power Lunch here) … Fervo Energy announced its biggest contract to date: two power purchase agreements totaling 320MW with one of the nation’s largest utilities (while also upping its delivery of power to Google) … Mythic nabbed NVIDIA veteran Taner Ozcelik to be its new CEO as the company ramps up shipments of its best-in-class (by a lot) chips for AI at the edge and in data centers … Oklo began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under $OKLO and saw strong commercial traction, announcing agreements with Equinix (500MW), Diamondback Energy (50MW), and Wyoming Hyperscale (150MW) for clean nuclear power (fun fact: at nearly 0% redemptions, this de-SPAC is likely record-setting or close to it) … Pivot Bio published a stunning 2023 Impact Report, high­lighting the massive scale at which it helps farmers reduce emissions from synthetic nitrogen fertilizers … Reach demoed its ground­breaking wireless power-at-a-distance technology to transmit 256W of power to a quadcopter drone in flight … and Reality Defender won ​“Most Innovative Startup” at the RSA Conference. 🍾

A few highlights from our DCVC Bio funds: both Avicenna Biosciences and Latus Bio emerged from stealth … Auron Ther­a­peu­tics unveiled strong preclinical data high­lighting its progress in developing next-gen targeted cancer therapies … CH4 Global (which is also backed from the flagship side of the house) celebrated the successful processing of the first cattle fed Methane Tamer at commercial scale … Creyon Bio partnered with Cajal Neuro­science to develop novel oligonu­cleotide-based medicines (OBMs) for neurode­gen­er­a­tive diseases … Radionetics Oncology entered a strategic agreement with Lilly to build up its pipeline of targeted radio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals; as part of the deal, Lilly gets exclusive right to acquire Radionetics for $1 billion … and Totus Medicines announced a multi-target research collab­o­ra­tion with Lilly to discover small molecule drug candidates.

The quarter also saw a steady flow of funding news across our portfolio: in DCVC flagship, ElectronX, Kanvas Biosciences, Karius, Samsara Eco, and Valar Labs all announced meaningful fundraises, as did, in DCVC Bio, Avicenna Biosciences and Latus Bio.

It was a good quarter for showing the flag and making new friends. At SynBioBeta 2024, DCVC Bio Managing Partner John Hamer, along with Alan Berry of Elo Life and Magi Richani of Nobell Foods, discussed how synbio in plants can fix our broken food system — and DCVC General Partner Jason Pontin interviewed Karsten Temme of Pivot Bio on bio-based innovations to decarbonize agriculture, and Chris Hart of Creyon Bio on the power of AI and ML to drive on-demand gene therapies into the clinic. At Worth’s Ground­breaking Women Summit and at Collision, DCVC Partner Rachel Slaybaugh discussed oppor­tu­ni­ties in climate tech. DCVC General Partner Ali Tamaseb organized an energizing event for DCVC and the Super Founders Club at the New York Stock Exchange: see them ring the closing bell here! (While we’re at it — see Zack and Oklo ring that same bell, for the day’s opening, here.)

In June, DCVC was honored to host a table at this year’s Eisenhower Award Gala in Washington, DC, which is put on by the excellent group Business Executives for National Security. We were joined by Capella Space CEO Frank Backes, Fortem Tech­nolo­gies CEO Jon Gruen, and Primer CEO Sean Moriarty (we proudly back all three companies), and we reconnected with friends vital to making deep tech central to the nation’s security and prosperity. Both of the evening’s honorees — Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and Palantir Founder and CEO Alex Karp — gave galvanizing, moving remarks to an audience increas­ingly determined to see the United States hold high the torch of freedom in a world that seeks our nation’s light and strength. 

On that note, we wish you a spectacular 4^th of July and an excellent start to Q3!

FUNDING HIGHLIGHTS

DCVC Flagship

ElectronX closed a $15 million Seed round to support the development of its clear­ing­house and exchange for trading power futures and other derivatives in near real-time, aiming to help accelerate the U.S. grid transition to renewable sources.

Kanvas Bio today announced a $12.5 million financing, co-led by DCVC, to further develop its spatial biology platform and advance two novel ther­a­peu­tics in its Immuno-oncology Program.

Karius raised $100 million to get its technology for detecting hard-to-identify infections into more hospitals.

Samsara Eco raised AU$100 million in Series A+ funding to scale its enzymatic recycling capa­bil­i­ties to divert millions of tons of plastics from landfills and incineration.

Valar Labs raised $22 million in Series A funding, co-led by DCVC, to help roll out its product — a commercial version of its bladder cancer test called Vesta — and keep advancing its science.

DCVC Bio

Avicenna Biosciences launched from stealth with $14.5 million in funding (DCVC Bio led the Seed) and introduced an extension to its machine learning technology platform to enhance medicinal chemistry and expedite clinical-stage drug discovery.

Latus Bio raised $54 million in Series A financing, co-led by DCVC Bio, to develop novel gene therapy candidates for central nervous system disorders.

OTHER NEWS

DCVC Flagship

Agility Robotics partnered with Manhattan Associates to integrate Digit and Agility Arc with the Manhattan Active Warehouse Management solution. Agility also signed a multi-year agreement with GXO to begin deploying Digit in GXO’s logistics operations following their successful pilot, marking the industry’s first formal commercial deployment and first Robots-as-a-Service deployment of humanoid robots! Digit was also named ​“Robot of the Year” by the Robot Report.

Capella Space launched Vessel Clas­si­fi­ca­tion, an AI-powered tool to automate the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of vessels captured by its high-quality SAR technology.

Fervo Energy last week announced the execution of two power purchase agreements (PPAs) totaling 320MW with Southern California Edison (SCE). Through a pioneering partnership with NV Energy and Google, Fervo also announced that it will deliver 115MW more power to Google’s Nevada data centers. The company also collab­o­rated with Turboden, a unit of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, for engineering and power plant equipment in Utah.

Oklo began trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: OKLO) and continued to see strong commercial traction: it entered agreements to supply 50MW of power to Diamondback Energy and 500MW to Equinix and partnered with Wyoming Hyperscale to deliver 100MW to its data centers. Oklo also formed a strategic partnership with Atomic Alchemy to collaborate on isotope production.

Pivot Bio published its 2023 Impact Report, which revealed that its customers avoided an astonishing >706,000 metric tons of CO₂e emissions by reducing synthetic nitrogen fertilizer on their farms.

Proprio announced a landmark partnership with Biedermann (an innovator in next-gen spinal implant systems) to integrate Biedermann’s spinal implants with the Paradigm system.

Reach demon­strated a ground­breaking radio frequency-based wireless power transfer system for UAVs, beaming 256 watts of power at a drone in flight at NASA’s Ames Research Center.

Rocket Lab celebrated a successful 50^th Electron launch, setting a new record for commercial launch vehicles hitting that milestone (in seven years and one month!). 🚀

Twelve signed an agreement with Boston Consulting Group for the purchase of sustainable aviation fuel certifi­cates (SAFc) from 2026 – 2029, which is expected to deliver an emissions reduction of over 4K metric tons of CO₂. It also was selected to supply SAF certifi­cates to orga­ni­za­tions repre­senting the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance (SABA) for five years.

Brimstone, Catalog, and Fourth Power were named Tech Pioneers by the World Economic Forum. 🎉

Fourth Power and Pivot Bio were selected for Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas list!

DCVC Bio

Auron Ther­a­peu­tics unveiled strong preclinical data high­lighting its progress in developing next-generation targeted cancer therapies.

CH4 Global (which is also backed from the flagship side of the house) celebrated the successful processing of the first cattle fed Methane Tamer at commercial scale in partnership with CirPro Australia.

Chroma Medicine entered into an agreement with the Whitehead Institute to provide exclusive access to innovative epigenetic editors and expand the reach of Chroma’s platform.

Creyon Bio announced a partnership with Cajal Neuro­science to develop novel oligonu­cleotide-based medicines (OBMs) for neurodegenerative diseases.

MycoWorks began collab­o­rating with Cadillac to develop a new class of material for high-performance automotive interiors — a first for the automotive industry!

Orca Bio (another company backed from both sides of the house) completed patient enrollment for the Precision‑T Phase 3 clinical study of Orca‑T, its lead inves­ti­ga­tional high-precision cell therapy.

Radionetics Oncology received $140 million from Lilly in a strategic arrangement to take forward Radionetics’ novel small molecule G protein coupled receptor (GPCR) targeted radio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. As part of the agreement, Lilly obtained the exclusive right to acquire Radionetics for $1 billion.

Totus Medicines announced a multi-target research collab­o­ra­tion with Lilly to discover small molecule drug candidates, using its proprietary OmniDEL platform to generate high-quality covalent compounds against Lilly targets.

Umoja Biopharma announced that pre-clinical non-human primate (NHP) data on its VivoVec in vivo CAR T delivery system was published in Blood — the first landmark, peer-reviewed publication of successful in vivo CAR T‑cell data in an immune competent NHP model.