VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--PHEMI, the company delivering security, privacy and governance insights through the promise of big data, today announced it has raised a $12.2 million round of venture financing to expand the commercialization phase of the company. Secured by a combination of new and existing investors, the financing was co-led by CTI Life Sciences Fund (CTI) and British Columbia Discovery Fund (Discovery Capital). It also included significant participation from early investors BDC Capital Healthcare Venture Fund and Yaletown Venture Partners.
A team of serial entrepreneurs, Dr. Paul Terry, Adam Lorant and John Seminerio—with expertise in developing and commercializing innovative business and technology solutions for a wide variety of industries, including healthcare, telecommunications and high-performance computing— joined Chris Thompson and Alan Rabinowitz, two St. Paul’s Hospital cardiologists, in their start-up called PHEMI. With its initial focus in the healthcare and life sciences sectors, PHEMI will expand its focus to include a variety of data-driven communities, including public sector, insurance and financial services.
“Enterprises of all sizes are recognizing the enormous opportunity for discovery and innovation buried in their data,” said Dr. Paul Terry, president and CEO of PHEMI. “Data growth is massive—smart devices, the digitization of healthcare, genomics and other omics data, and dataflow from various sources such as email and the Internet—businesses must be able to take advantage of big data to remain competitive. Organizations that can move quickly to unlock their data silos, transform them into digital assets, and share this information, while protecting privacy and security, will win. With this additional capital, PHEMI will expand our sales, marketing and engineering efforts to ensure our partners and customers can use all of their data to create value and innovate.”
Innovative companies are striving to be more data-driven. PHEMI helps them unlock and share data without compromising privacy. PHEMI combines the scale and performance of big data with features that support rigorous security and performance, so enterprises can turn their focus from collecting and storing data to using it strategically, deriving insights to drive operational efficiencies, fuel innovation for competitive advantage, and lower costs. With the new financing in place, PHEMI will expand the sales channel for its award-winning solution, extending their solution offerings and sales reach through application and system integrator partners and data science expertise.
Dr. Shermaine Tilley, managing partner at CTI Life Sciences Fund stated: “Healthcare IT is an exciting and new investment direction for CTI. PHEMI’s unique solution and highly accomplished leadership team are on a rapid path to commercialization and we expect them to exceed expectations for current and prospective customers.”
“The big data market represents a tremendous growth opportunity for PHEMI in a variety of industries," said Charles Cook, CMA for Discovery Capital. "PHEMI shares our vision for serving this segment of the market with a turnkey solution that helps organizations address the dual challenges of gathering data for insights while ensuring data privacy and security. We look forward to working with them as they evolve the way enterprises deploy big data and accelerate the rewards."
About PHEMI
PHEMI is a big data warehouse company that lets organizations easily access and mine any variety of data at any volume to drive insights that lower costs, improve outcomes, and allow better decisions faster. An Organizational Ambassador for Privacy by Design (PbD), PHEMI brings both privacy and performance to big data, along with the data management and control to ensure innovation, and privacy, security and governance. For more information visit http://www.phemi.com/ and follow us on Twitter.
About CTI Life Sciences Fund
CTI is a Montreal-based limited partnership making venture capital investments in high quality emerging life sciences companies at the start-up and development stage primarily in Canada. CTI has a diverse team of professionals in science and finance with extensive experience in the biotechnology and the pharmaceutical industries. The Fund works closely with entrepreneurs and researchers to increase the value of young companies. More information on CTI can be found at http://www.ctisciences.com.
About British Columbia Discovery Fund (VCC) Inc.
British Columbia Discovery Fund (VCC) Inc. was established to make venture capital investments in a portfolio of small businesses in British Columbia that qualify under the Small Business Venture Capital Act, focusing on all of B.C.’s top internationally recognized technology clusters: information technology (software and hardware); mobile technology (wireless and networking solutions); clean technology (alternative energy and energy-saving technology solutions); new media; and health and life sciences. To obtain further information about the Fund, please visit www.sedar.com or www.bcdiscoveryfund.com.
About BDC Capital
A subsidiary of the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), BDC Capital offers a full spectrum of specialized financing and investment solutions to help Canadian entrepreneurs achieve their full growth potential. With more than $1.6 billion under management, BDC Capital takes a strategic, patient approach to nurture companies’ development over the long term.
BDC Capital’s Healthcare Venture Fund invests in transformative Canadian companies that will dramatically increase healthcare productivity by reducing healthcare costs while improving patient health. The experienced team manages $270 million in capital across two different funds and invests in drugs, devices, diagnostics and digital health sectors. For more information, please visit www.bdccapital.ca/health.
About Yaletown Venture Partners
Yaletown Venture Partners invests in emerging-growth sustainability innovation and intelligent enterprise technology companies in Canada and the US Pacific Northwest. With offices in Vancouver, Calgary and Seattle, Yaletown is led by a team that brings together industry relationships and more than 130 years collective experience building and financing technology companies. Founded in 2002, Yaletown is backed by leading institutional investors and a network of successful technology entrepreneurs, executives, and angel investors. Find out more about Yaletown and our portfolio of companies at www.yaletown.com.
