Today's deal net contains news from Nexthink, Metalenz, Grapheal, CellulaRevolution and Astrata.

Nexthink, a Switzerland-based staff management software spinout of École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), raised $180m in a series D round yesterday led by investment firm Permira’s Growth Opportunities Fund. The round valued Nexthink at $1.1bn and also included Highland Europe and Index Ventures. It will allow Nexthink to accelerate its growth and expansion efforts, with a focus on the US. Bruce Chizen, senior adviser at Permira, will join the board of directors. Nexthink previously raised $85m in a December 2018 round led by Index Ventures, with participation from investors Highland Europe, Forestay Capital, VI Partners, Auriga Partners, Galéo Capital, TOP Funds and Olivier Pomel. It has secured a total of $330m to date from shareholders also including trading and services firm Mannai Corporation and Waypoint Capital. Metalenz, a US-based optical lens technology spinout of Harvard University, emerged from stealth on Thursday with $10m from investors including 3M Ventures, Applied Ventures, Intel Capital, M Ventures and TDK Ventures, on behalf of consumer and industrial goods producer 3M, chipmakers Applied Materials and Intel, pharmaceutical firm Merck Group and electronics manufacturer TDK respectively. The corporates were joined in the round by Tsingyuan Ventures and Braemar Energy Ventures. Grapheal, a France-based developer of graphene-based embedded biosensors set up by regional tech transfer office Satt Linksium, has received a total of €1.9m ($2.3m) in combined equity and non-dilutive funding, including an undisclosed amount of seed capital from Novalis Biotech’s Acceleration Fund. The total also includes a range of grants and convertible notes and loans from state-owned investment bank Bpifrance. Grapheal’s technology consists of smart patches applied to wounds to continuously monitor patients through a cloud-based platform. It is based on research at the Neel Institute at CNRS Grenoble. CellulaRevolution, a UK-based spinout of Newcastle University that is developing a continuous cell culturing system for the medical and pharmaceutical sectors, has obtained £1m ($1.4m) in funding from the Northern Accelerator Seed Investment Fund, CPT Capital, Orange Light Ventures, funds managed by Northstar Ventures, the North East Innovation Fund and private investor Stephan Schmidt, BusinessLive reported yesterday. Astrata, a US-based digital healthcare quality company, has been spun out of UPMC Enterprises, the commercialisation arm of University of Pittsburgh Medical Center – the health system affiliated with University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences. Aimed at insurance providers, Astrata relies on analytics and natural language processing technologies to analyse unstructured clinical data and offer real-time insights to assess the quality of care. – Additional reporting by…

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Thierry Heles

Thierry Heles is the editor of Global University Venturing, host of the Beyond the Breakthrough interview podcast and responsible for the monthly GUV Gazette (sign up here for free).