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November 2011: OION is to participate in the Business Angel Co-investment Fund (Angel CoFund) announced by the government today that will provide £50 million to invest in high growth companies alongside business angels. OION Network was one of five private sector partners who worked with Capital for Enterprise to develop the successful bid submitted to the Regional Growth Fund for the £50 million Angel CoFund. The Angel CoFund will invest alongside business angel syndicates in growing companies. Its objectives are to boost the quality and quantity of business angel investing in England, and to support long-term, high quality jobs in high growth companies. To read the full press release click here

October 2011: MGB Biopharma Limited (presented early 2010) received a second tranche of financing of £800,000 during September from existing investors including OION members. The second tranche was initiated in direct response to the company meeting the technology milestone of preclinical proof of concept for its lead compound MGB BP-3.

September 2011: ULTRaMo (presented Jan 11) completed funding round of £300k and now have a waiting list for £4M of engine (as premature as this is since we have not completed proof of concept yet). Have agreement in principle for project financing of £50M against the first Ultramo's to be produced and four expressions of interest to finance the £2M we will need for development from proof of concept to production readiness.

September 2011: CamStent (presented Jun 2010) has announced it closed £350k of seed funding from a consortium of angles having successfully Demonstrates Effectiveness of its Anti-Microbial Surface Coating. CamStent is now focused on building revenues through the development and licensing of its proprietary coatings platform. The first application of its proprietary technology will be to coat urinary catheters for the prevention of urinary tract infections. The company also has plans for a pipeline of other significant opportunities for variants of the surface coating technology in preventing biofilm attachment in other healthcare and consumer markets. OION would like to wish them every success in the next stage of their development.

August 2011: Eykona (presented Feb 11) has raised £1.28m in its "B series" funding round to allow an enhanced marketing strategy to be put in place. Management have spent recent months perfecting the prototype camera and doing some pre-marketing which has led to an impressive soft order book The first sale of cameras and targets has been made to a large London teaching hospital and so the commercial roll out has begun.

Aug 2011: Can we Afford the NHS? Article on NHS Innovations SE, full detail click here

July 2011: Pulse Tidal first presented at OION in Autumn 2009 and raised funding with help from OION investors. They came back in October 2010, after hitting all of their milestones, opening a new round of £2million that would include £500k alongside existing corporate investors closing with the help of OION again. Pulse Tidal is at the forefront of developing ways of generating electricity from tides and is working on developing the world's first commercial shallow water tidal energy system close to the shore of Kyle Rhea, Scotland.

July 2011: Historic Futures (presented Mar 11) have raised nearly £900k at second interim closing, against an initial target of £750k. The round will be open for further investment until the end of August (up to a limit of £1.25k)

May 2011: Crescent Diagnostics (presented Jan 11) secures Euro 1.5 Million ($2.2 million) for its predictive test for Osteoporosis fracture. Crescent's novel test will enable physicians to diagnose the risk of osteoporosis related fracture both quickly and easily. using a small nail clipping. Crescent presented to OION back in January 2011

Apr 2011: OION announced results at its annual investors dinner showing that it has maintained its track record of deals despite the economic downturn. 17 new deals were completed in the year to 31 March 2011, raising just over £2 million of direct investment from angel members of the three networks run through OION Ltd and enabling invested companies to leverage an additional £6.6 million from other sources. In the past three years, OION has helped over 40 companies raise more than £27 million.

Apr 2011: OION Ltd was one of five partners in the successful bid submitted by Capital for Enterprise Ltd (CfEL) for a £50 million co-investment fund, one of only two national bids to secure funding from the £450 million Regional Growth Fund. The other successful bid came from Community Development Finance Association. Together, it is estimated that they will create 35 direct jobs and 44,587 indirect jobs, the highest indirect jobs figure amongst all the successful bids. See further details here

Apr 2011: Toximet is a University of Greenwich spin-out company which was founded by Raymond Coker and Martin Nagler in 2005. Toximet presented at the OION session of Venturefest back in July 2010 and first closing included OION investors. Current opportunity for further round.

Mar 2011: Pulse Tidal closes £2m round, and includes an OION investor. Pulse tidal generates electrical power from the ocean tides; offering clean, renewable, invisible, and totally predictable, electricity. Pulse Tidal can generate four times the power of competing "horizontal axis" machines in any given water depth.It can generate the same power in only half the water depth of competitors and allows devices to be deployed at commercial scale (1MW plus) in water as shallow as 20m.

Feb 2011: OION Members take lead in Electro Spinning investment with more than £140k of the £250k investment raised through the network. The Electrospinning Company Limited is a nanofibre innovation and development company that was set up by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxford in 2008 in order to use the electrospinning process to manufacture nanofibre structures and scaffolds for the biotech industry and in particular the rapidly emerging stem cell therapy sector

Feb 2011: Intergence spins out IT visualisation start-up Real Status Real Status was spun out after completing a successful funding round through a private placement coordinated by WH Ireland and involving OION members

Dec 2010: Anaxsys closes extension of current round that sees its medical device, respiR8 launch into the market. The respiR8 is a two part device comprising an industry standard oxygen mask, fitted with Anaxsys’ patented sensor which measures each breath, and a small electronic monitor that captures, displays and records the patients’ continuous respiratory rate. The patients’ respiratory rate can be viewed in either real-time numeric information display or trending display on the monitor’s easy to read AMOLED screen. respiR8 also allows healthcare professionals to monitor safely multiple patients at once, thereby improving hospital productivity while ensuring quality patient care

Nov 2010: Meceria closes final part of round after presenting at the October meeting

Nov 2010: Bladon Jets raises £500,000 to power cars of the future
New micro gas turbine in Jaguar C-X75 super car unveiled at Paris and LA Motor Shows
Bladon Jets, an award-winning company leading the world in developing micro gas turbine engines for cars and power generation, has raised £500,000 in a recent funding round from members of the Oxford Investment Opportunity Network (OION), Europe's leading technology investment network.To read the full story click here

 

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Press releases and articles

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Previous press releases and articles

Press releases from 2002 to 2004 can be found in our Archive.