The latest funding round for Nature's Toolbox marks the largest for a New Mexico company so far this year as the Rio Rancho startup looks to drive commercialization around its pair of flagship biotechnologies.
Nature's Toolbox (NTx) announced its $47.5 million Series B round of financing Thursday morning. RA Capital Management, a health care and life sciences-focused venture firm based in Boston, led the round, which NTx's CEO James "Jamie" Coffin, Ph.D., said will be used to help scale and sell two biomanufacturing platforms.
NTx has historically marketed those two platforms — called NTxscribe, which produces mRNA, and NTxpress, which makes proteins, respectively — as biomanufacturing processes. But thanks to recent contract work and the new funding, Coffin said the company is looking to build those platforms into marketable instruments going into 2024 while continuing to license the technologies to interested parties.
"It's kind of a new day for NTx," he told New Mexico Inno. "We're moving forward as a company. The team's incredibly excited."
To do that, Coffin said NTx is eyeing both employee growth and physical expansion. The startup expects to grow to over 50 employees by the end of the year, he said, and is actively hiring for a range of positions, from executive leadership roles to scientists to sales and business development staff.
In addition, NTx is close to starting operations at a 2,000-square-foot warehouse behind its existing headquarters at 7701 Innovation Way NE in Rio Rancho. It's looking at a potential 20,000-square-foot expansion in New Mexico, too, which Coffin said the startup is currently in conversations with the state over.
Growth could happen outside New Mexico, as well, Coffin added. He told New Mexico Inno that NTx is talking with some surrounding states about a potential manufacturing expansion, which Coffin said would allow the startup to access a wider base of potential employees, as well as possible acquisition deals.
"Sometimes having one site can be a dangerous thing for a company, if there's a disaster or something like that," Coffin said. "We're a big player in pandemic preparedness. You have to make sure that you have multifunctionality in your facilities."
While surrounding states are on NTx's radar, Coffin added the startup has "no intention of leaving [New Mexico] or trying to change our footprint here."
He said NTx expects any substantial physical expansion to come in the first half of next year as the company accelerates its speed to market. The startup is bidding on a large set of grants and is in the middle of large-scale pilots with several pharmaceutical companies, as well, Coffin added.
"There's a lot of players in these spaces," he said. "We want to make sure we're out there in front of everybody."
It's also seen some recent activity in the months leading up to the Series B announcement, including work under an $18 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract and a prototype partnership with Houston Methodist Hospital. NTx also brought on a new chief financial officer early last month.
Coffin told New Mexico Inno that NTx "started really talking with people" about raising the Series B round in May of this year. That's around the same time the startup "locked in" with RA Capital Management, the Boston firm that led the round, he added.
That firm had a small investment in NTx's $13 million Series A financing round, which the startup raised in early 2020. Peter Kolchinsky, Ph.D., a founder and managing partner at RA Capital Management, will join NTx's board of directors after the firm led the Series B round — which Coffin said is an "up round," or a financing round raised at a higher pre-money valuation.
Anzu Partners, a Washington, D.C.-based venture firm that led NTx's Series A round, joined the Rio Rancho startup's Series B round, along with Santa Fe-based BlueStone Venture Partners. David Seldin, a managing partner at Anzu, also sits on the startup's board.
NTx announced its Series B round toward the tail end of what's been a slow year for venture capital — something the New Mexico startup felt while raising its recent round, Coffin said.
"It was a much more difficult environment this time," he said about raising the round as compared to previous capital raises he's been a part of. "But we locked on people pretty quickly. There's a lot companies doing down rounds right now because it's so difficult."
But as the bioscience industry continues its growth in New Mexico, with startups like Albuquerque's BioFlyte and Santa Fe-based Mercury Bio raising their own bits of capital, Coffin sees potential for more money flowing to companies operating in that industry in the state.
"When they come to states like that they start looking at other things because they're here, frankly," he said about large venture capital firms. "And so, getting companies like Anzu [Partners] and RA [Capital Management] here will certainly help the state going forward, I'm sure."
