Hi everyone,

September was a milestone month for Anzu Partners: we announced the close of our third venture fund with over $200 million of committed capital, and we closed the merger of Envoy Medical with Anzu SPAC I, now trading on NASDAQ: COCH (for cochlear).

With our third venture fund, we continue to support transformative technologies at emerging companies in the industrial technology, life science, and clean tech arenas. As of the end of September, Fund III had deployed $123.1 million to 12 companies.

One reasonable question might be: since it is early days for Fund III, why have you deployed the capital relatively quickly? In reality, what appears as rapid deployment is actually execution on years of thematic diligence and pipeline development. We built the conviction to invest early because we started tracking technologies very early. As a few select examples: 

• Fund III first backed EnCharge AI – which makes highly efficient, highly powerful chips for AI applications – in February 2022 (then stayed in stealth for months), about eight months before OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, triggering a surge in focus on AI compute power. Anzu followed the EnCharge founders’ work at Princeton for 4 years before investing. 
• Fund III first backed South 8 – which makes batteries designed to avoid ‘thermal runaway’ (better known as "catching fire’) – in December 2021, about five months before Jaguar and Nikola both recalled large numbers of electric vehicles due to risk of the batteries catching fire. Anzu followed South 8 and the team’s early work for 4 years prior to investing. 
• Fund III first backed Medcrypt – which provides cybersecurity solutions for medical devices – in October 2022, about six months before the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered medical device manufacturers to provide “a plan to monitor, identify, and address, as appropriate, in a reasonable time, post-market cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and exploits." Anzu followed Medcrypt for a year before investing. 

Our partner David Michael commented at the launch of Fund III that, “There’s no time like the present to invest in the core technologies that will support the industries of tomorrow, because tomorrow is arriving very rapidly.” And, some of our Fund III portfolio companies, such as Arduino and e-Zinc, have already achieved follow-on rounds (led by new financial investors) from Anzu’s original round.  

The completion of the investment in Envoy Medical follows in this theme. Anzu’s Fund I backed Banyan Biomarkers in 2016, about two years before the FDA approved Banyan’s diagnostic as the first blood test for concussion (featured in The New York Times). Anzu’s Fund II backed Sofregen in December 2019, about six months before patients began to receive its FDA-approved vocal restoration treatment. Anzu is now backing Envoy Medical, a hearing health company going through clinical trials for a breakthrough fully implanted cochlear implant.

The close of Anzu’s third venture fund was covered by Wall Street Journal VC Pro newsletter, Axios Pro, both the Axios Pro Rata and Climate Deals newsletters, Fortune Term Sheet, Boston Business Journal, Washington Business Journal, Tampa Bay Business Journal, Atlanta Inno, and more. 

We are excited to work to stay ahead of the curve on tomorrow’s industries, and our heartfelt thanks to the many limited partners and investors who have partnered with us on this journey. 

Best, 

Whitney Haring-Smith 
Managing Partner 

PORTFOLIO COMPANY UPDATES

Arduino Raised $22M in Additional Funding to Support Enterprise and Cloud Expansion and Hit an Integration Milestone

Arduino, the open-source hardware pioneer, announced the close of an additional $22 million in funding for a total of $54 million in Series B financing. The expansion was co-led by CDP Venture Capital, Italy’s largest VC firm, and Anzu Partners. CDP Venture Capital invested through Large Ventures, its growth stage vehicle launched in 2023 to support the scaling up of Italian global category leaders, which kicks off its portfolio with this transaction. Joining them is semiconductor leader Arm.

The latest capital supplements the $32 million Series B financing, underscoring the company’s ongoing expansion and its pivotal role in democratizing electronics as a platform. The additional funding allows Arduino to grow even more in the U.S., where it recently opened an office in Austin, TX and established a presence in Chicago, IL. A major chunk of the $22 million will be invested to further strengthen the R&D team based in Torino, with the goal to grow enterprise application libraries and the Arduino Cloud for Business with more integrations and Embedded AI features. Arduino will also use the funds to accelerate its go-to-market initiatives and customer support in selected high-potential geographies.

The announcement was covered in Wall Street Journal VC Pro newsletter, Fortune Term Sheet, TechCrunch, Pitchbook, EE News Europe, and more. Read the press release here.

Arduino also announced that its hardware is now integrated into more than 30,000 businesses globally to drive commercial innovation. The Arduino System Integrators Partnership Program saw tremendous growth in the third quarter of this year, with eight companies signing up as partners, including AWS, AT Kearney, DMC, DojoFive, Motion Technology, BSU Inc, Riotsecure, and Opreto. These new partners are helping to fuel growth for professional service companies integrating Arduino technology in commercial projects for enterprise clients. Over 20 new system integrators have been accepted into the partnership program over the calendar year. The 30,000 businesses now using Arduino provide an example of the growing demand for Arduino PRO hardware and software technology in enterprise IIoT applications.

Aspinity Secured $5M in Series B Funding to Bring Breakthrough AI/ML Technology to a Global Market

Aspinity, the leader in near-zero power AI solutions, announced that it has closed $5 million in Series B funding from current investors Anzu Partners, Birchmere Ventures, Mountain State Capital and Riverfront Ventures. Growing Aspinity’s total funding to more than $19 million, the round also includes new strategic investor and partner Unitrontech, a leading distributor of automotive semiconductors and key partner of leading automotive manufacturers. 

Aspinity and Unitrontech aim to deliver high performance, near-zero power after-market and integrated AI solutions for automotive applications. For example, an always-on dashcam solution that leverages sensor fusion and AI to detect and record only the events that are important to the car owner (i.e., ignores sounds or vibrations external to and not related to the car). In this application, the AML100 can be programmed to detect impacts and intrusions in general, or to detect and alert to specific disturbances such as glass break. 

The announcement was covered in Fortune Term Sheet, Pittsburgh Inno, Silicon Valley Journal, VC News Daily, Pulse 2.0, and more.

Niron Magnetics Appointed Vice President of Government Affairs and New Board Member to Expand its Focus on Government Relations

Niron Magnetics, the company pioneering the world’s first high-performance, rare earth-free permanent magnets, announced it has appointed Don Rosenberg to the company’s Board of Directors. As a member of the board, Rosenberg will support Niron’s collaboration with the U.S. government, guide intellectual property strategy, and advise on regulatory matters as the company commercializes its Clean Earth Magnet® technology.

Don Rosenberg has extensive leadership experience at some of today’s most innovative technology companies. In 2022, he retired as Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Qualcomm, where he was responsible for overseeing its worldwide legal matters, its global government affairs organization, and the corporate compliance function. During his 14-year tenure at Qualcomm, Rosenberg played a key role in shaping and executing the company’s strategic direction and policy initiatives, regularly engaging with governments throughout the world. He previously served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary at Apple and, prior to that, he was Senior Vice President and General Counsel at IBM.

Additionally, Niron has appointed Mark Schramek as Vice President, Government Affairs. In this role, Schramek will lead Niron’s corporate outreach to the United States Congress and Executive Branch, state and local governments, and trade associations advocating for the iron nitride magnet industry.

Mark Schramek brings 25 years of legislative, operational, and management experience to Niron. As a seasoned government relations executive within the aerospace and defense industries, he has advised senior defense, industry and congressional leadership. Prior to joining Niron, Schramek was Executive Director, Corporate and Government Affairs for Cirrus Aircraft, a global general aviation aircraft manufacturer. Schramek also served as Vice President, Government Relations at Embraer North America, a commercial aircraft manufacturer, where he was instrumental in securing congressional support for various programs. 

The announcement was covered in Law 360 Pulse, Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, and both the Politico Playbook and Influence newsletters. 

BioFlyte Validated its Aerosolized Fentanyl Detection Capabilities and Appointed Daniel Gussin as Vice President of Product

BioFlyte, a biothreat detection firm with a revolutionary new class of fieldable biological threat collection, detection, and identification solutions, announced that it has added fentanyl to its classification library for its flagship BioTOF z200 system following successful in-house proof of concept and subsequent third-party validation testing. These findings also led to a significant software upgrade that allows the BioTOF z200 to simultaneously sample and accurately identify chemical and biological threat agents in minutes, unlike any other solution on the market today.

Fentanyl continues to fuel the most severe drug crisis in the history of the United States, and when released as an aerosol in a biothreat attack, these materials pose a significant danger to people and critical infrastructure. While there are some existing technologies that can detect these types of threats, they often require complex equipment, are expensive to maintain and utilize, and cannot easily cover both chemical and biological-based threat agents. BioFlyte’s BioTOF z200 is the first dynamic threat monitoring solution that is capable of early warning detection, analysis and confirmatory identification across the chemical and biological threat landscape.

Read the press release here.

BioFlyte also appointed Daniel (Dan) Gussin as Vice President of Product. In this role, Gussin will lead the company’s product development roadmap and commercialization efforts to ensure that its evolving capabilities continue to exceed customer expectations. 

Gussin has more than two decades of proven experience leading product development efforts within the diagnostics and life sciences industries and brings both technical and leadership skills to BioFlyte. Most recently, he served as the Director of Product and Program Management and the Interim Head of Quality at Genalyte Inc., a leading diagnostics and analytics company. He owned the product lifecycle and spearheaded multiple technical programs to increase manufacturing yield and throughput, leading to significant reductions in production costs. 

InterVenn Biosciences Welcomed Accomplished Diagnostics Executive Joshua Stahl as CEO

InterVenn Biosciences, the life sciences company pioneering glycoproteomic-based diagnostics, announced that Joshua Stahl has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer to guide the company’s next phase of commercial growth.

Mr. Stahl has a proven track record of building successful diagnostics companies. In 2013 as the first employee, Mr. Stahl joined ArcherDX, a leading genomics analysis company developing industry-leading products and services for therapy optimization and cancer monitoring. Throughout his tenure, Mr. Stahl held leadership roles with increasing responsibility before becoming Chief Scientific Officer and Chief Operating Officer. He helped build ArcherDX into a leading global diagnostic organization, which was the first to have a Next Generation Sequencing (NGS)-based liquid biopsy companion diagnostic approved by the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency. In 2020, ArcherDX was acquired by Invitae Corporation where Mr. Stahl served as President of Oncology following the acquisition. 

This announcement was covered by Genome Web, BioSpace, Endpoints News, and Precision Medical Online. 

NUBURU Appointed Ron Nicol as Executive Chairman of its Board of Directors  

NUBURU, Inc., a leading innovator in high-power and high-brightness industrial blue laser technology, announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Ron Nicol as Executive Chairman. Mr. Nicol, who joined NUBURU as a Director in 2020, previously acted as the independent Chairman of the Board since 2023. In his newly extended role as Executive Chairman, Mr. Nicol will prioritize scaling the Company’s commercial efforts as well as executive administrative functions.

Mr. Nicol’s extensive executive experience spans over 40 years and is paired with a background in physics and the Nuclear Navy. He has been a Senior Advisor to Boston Consulting Group since 2016, where prior to that, he was a longtime senior partner and managing director leading the Technology, Media & Telecommunications practice.

Dr. Mark Zediker, CEO and Co-Founder of NUBURU, will focus on scaling the Company’s production capacity to meet existing as well as expected customer demand. In addition, Dr. Zediker will continue to lead NUBURU’s technology and development efforts centered around the introduction of multi-kilowatt and single-mode blue laser systems, as well as identify strategic and opportunistic projects in the defense and government markets.

The announcement was covered in MarketWatch, Semiconductor Today, and Photonics.com. 

BioSkryb Genomics Joined the NIST Genome Editing Consortium to Define Standards in Genome Editing Research and Commercialization

BioSkryb Genomics, a company transforming single-cell analysis by enabling the most complete multiomic view of the cellular ecosystem, from discovery to diagnostics, announced it has joined the NIST Genome Editing Consortium to help address the measurements and standards needed to increase confidence of utilizing genome editing technologies in research and commercial products.

NIST has brought together experts across the genome editing field including stakeholders in industry, academia, and government to address these open questions around necessary measurements and standards. The goal of the consortium is to establish greater confidence in the characterization of genome editing outputs through the evaluation of genome editing assay pipelines, generation of benchmark data, and more. As a member of the consortium, BioSkryb will utilize its ResolveDNA® and ResolveOME™ family of products facilitating characterization of genome editing on a cell-by-cell basis, to help define genome editing and reporting standards, generate benchmark data, and improve the understanding of on-and off-target effects.

The announcement was covered by Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News, Genome Web, and BioBuzz. 

NTx was Awarded BARDA DRIVe Vaccines on Demand Contract to Demonstrate a Novel RNA Vaccine Production Platform

Nature’s Toolbox, Inc. (NTx) a life sciences company enabling novel pharmaceutical RNA and protein development and production, today announced it has been awarded a contract under the Vaccines on Demand program from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NTx, in collaboration with Houston Methodist Hospital, will demonstrate the potential of its NTxscribe platform to meet the needs for a scalable, rapidly deployable RNA manufacturing capability to support global vaccine preparedness and response.

The NTxscribe platform is a cell-free, true continuous flow manufacturing system that delivers scalable RNA (including mRNA and self-amplifying RNA) materials in a tabletop footprint. This enzymatic process is designed to provide a low cost and rapidly deployable, vertically integrated manufacturing system. Through this program, the system is being evaluated for its express development of RNA vaccines and therapeutics for infectious diseases, as well as its capability for distributed bio-manufacturing.

The announcement was covered in New Mexico Inno, Rio Rancher Observer, and Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News.  

6K Additive was Awarded a Five-Year Blanket Purchase Agreement with the US Army Development Command

6K Additive, a division of 6K Inc. and leader in the sustainable production of materials for additive manufacturing, announced the award of a 5-year Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) from Army Contracting Command in support of US Army Development Command (DEVCOM) for strategic high-performance metal powders following a competitive source selection.

The BPA supports increased weapons research and development initiatives at DEVCOM and helps meet additional demand for manufacturing of prototypes and small quantity manufacturing for Low-Rate Initial Production (LRIP). The BPA can be utilized by entities at Picatinny Arsenal in NJ, Benet Labs in NY, Adelphi Laboratories in MD, and Rock Island Arsenal in IL. 6K Additive’s metal powders will be produced utilizing the company’s proprietary UniMelt® microwave plasma platform, which underpins 6K’s capability to source, process, and reclaim scrap components, shop scrap, and used powders for conversion into aerospace-grade metal powders.

The news was covered by TCT Magazine, 3DPrint.com, 3D Printing Industry, and Metal AM. 

Xendee Entered a Contract to Support Futuristic Project ‘NEOM’ Enabling Conversion to Renewable Energy

Xendee, the world’s leading Microgrid Decision Support Platform, announced a contract supporting NEOM, the visionary project aiming to create a sustainable and futuristic city in the northwest region of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Xendee will provide its expertise to support NEOM in planning its renewable energy and microgrid projects.

NEOM, meaning ‘new future,’ has quickly become a hub for individuals from 86 countries who are passionate about building a new economic model for the country and the world. With over 2,800 staff members already living and working onsite, NEOM is spearheading the transformation towards an environmentally friendly and sustainable city.

Xendee’s primary objective with this work is to assist NEOM in the conversion from fossil-based systems to a renewable energy-driven infrastructure, leveraging solutions including solar panels, battery systems, and other innovative technologies like hydrogen. Xendee’s work aligns with NEOM’s ambitious goals of running entirely on renewable energy, creating a city free from roads, cars, and emissions while preserving 95% of the land for nature.

This announcement was covered by Solar Quarter and other trade publications.  

NanoCellect Biomedical Welcomed Peter Vander Horn as Senior VP of Research & Development

NanoCellect Biomedical, a leading pioneer in gentle microfluidic cell sorting technologies, announced the addition of Peter Vander Horn, PhD. to their executive team as Senior Vice President of Research & Development. With an illustrious career marked by groundbreaking advancements in life sciences, Dr. Vander Horn's expertise will further advance NanoCellect's ability to deliver innovative solutions to the cellular research markets.

Peter Vander Horn brings nearly three decades of proven experience in engineering and innovation within the biomedical sector. Throughout his career, Peter has consistently demonstrated a keen ability to bridge the gap between cutting-edge technology and practical applications. His arrival marks a significant step in reinforcing NanoCellect’s position as a driving force in the life sciences industry.

ADDITIONAL PC MEDIA COVERAGE

• GelSight’s CEO Youssef Benmokhtar was interviewed by Quality Digest during HexLive alongside Milan Kocic, senior director of Hexagon’s Sixth Sense program. Milan also highlighted GelSight in a recent article for Robotics 24/7. Scans from a GelSight Mobile device were also featured in an article from The New York Times, with a close-up view at tennis court surfaces at the U.S. Open.
• Niron Magnetics was mentioned in a Harvard Business Review article on how deep tech can drive sustainability and profitability in manufacturing. Niron was also included in a list of 7 technologies for fighting climate change from Worth and a story by the University of Minnesota highlighting the record number of startups that have launched from U of M in 2023.
• BioFlyte’s project with the Pittsburgh Airport to detect airborne toxins was covered by Government Technology and Homeland Security Today.
• CytoTronics and its founders were profiled by The Harvard Gazette.
• OTI Lumionics was featured in a BioMetric Update piece on under-display face biometrics on smartphones.
• Xendee’s CTO and co-founder Michael Stadler was quoted in a Microgrid Knowledge article on a US Air Force nuclear microgrid project. Xendee’s partnership with the Idaho National Lab was also mentioned in another recent Microgrid Knowledge article.
• Liquid Instruments’ CEO Daniel Shaddock was interviewed by Pulse 2.0 about how Liquid Instruments delivers modern, software-defined test and measurement solutions that provide advanced capabilities, a great user experience, and custom programmability for maximum flexibility and performance in a range of applications.
• Voltaiq’s CEO Tal Sholklapper was quoted in a Tech Briefs article on getting EV battery gigafactories up to speed.

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ABOUT ANZU PARTNERS

Anzu Partners is an investment firm that focuses on industrial and life science technology companies with the potential to transform their industries. Anzu works with entrepreneurs to develop and commercialize technological innovations by providing capital alongside deep expertise in business development, market positioning, intellectual property, global connectivity, and operations. For more information, please visit:  https://anzupartners. com/