Astellas wagers $425M-plus to buy a shot at hatching a 'neural dust' breakthrough in bioelectronics
Over the past 2 years Astellas has been moving closer and closer to a Berkeley startup called iota Biosciences. First they invested in the developer of ultra-tiny, dust sized implantable medical devices in 2018. Then they partnered a year ago.
And today they’ve moved in to buy the whole thing.
Astellas is paying $127.5 million to buy up all the equity in the upstart it doesn’t already own. There’s $176.5 million more to cover milestone goals. And to prove its devotion to the technology, the Japanese player is committing an additional $125 million to achieve those goals over the next 5 years.
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