Hercules Technology Growth Capital, a finance company providing venture debt and equity to venture capital and private equity-backed technology and life science companies, has committed USD33.0m in structured debt financing to three new portfolio companies.
Hercules has committed USD15.0m to California-based Alexza Pharmaceuticals, a pharmaceutical company with novel drug delivery technology focused on the research, development and commercialisation of proprietary products for the acute treatment of central nervous system conditions.
Hercules also committed USD15.0m to Chroma Therapeutics, a biotech company headquartered in the UK which is focused on taking advantage of the power of chromatin biology and novel drug accumulation approaches to discover and develop new types of targeted cancer and inflammation treatments.
Additionally, Hercules has committed USD3.0m to Boston, Massachusetts-based PeerApp. A software company that designs, develops, manufactures, markets, sells and supports its UltraBand products, PeerApp is a supplier of intelligent media caching solutions for internet service providers and network operators worldwide. Its software allows service providers to meet the bandwidth and service quality challenges of content delivery through HTTP streams and video download.
“These three new investments demonstrate that we continue to selectively grow and diversify our portfolio,” says Manuel A. Henriquez (pictured), co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Hercules. “As we have said since the beginning of the year, Hercules is focused on expanding the size of its investment portfolio in 2010 by providing capital to innovative, well-managed and high-quality companies. Alexza Pharmaceuticals, Chroma Therapeutics and PeerApp are representative of the class of emerging companies with whom we want to partner and support as they grow their businesses.”
