Richmond pharmaceutical company Phlow Corp. is setting out to raise $25 million in new funding, according to a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The public benefit corporation, which seeks to manufacture high-quality, essential generic drugs at a low cost, has raised $5 million toward its goal. It is looking to raise the funding through debt as well as the right to purchase company options at a specified price in the future, according to the filing.
Its lone commitment to the new round was recorded on June 28, according to the filing.
Richmond BizSense was the first to report about the new funding. Phlow declined to comment to BizSense about the funding. I’ve reached out to Phlow for comment and will update this post if I hear back.
The company is helping build about 12 medicines that are either in short supply or vulnerable because they tend come from other countries, according to a recent Richmond Times-Dispatch report. Phlow has not disclosed what medicines it is working on, citing national security concerns.
Phlow kicked off production at its facility in Petersburg last year. It is headquartered at 424 Hull St. in Richmond and also operates a lab at Richmond’s Bio+Tech Park.
The new funding follows a $36 million Series B round that Phlow closed in April 2023 that it used to grow its commercial and manufacturing businesses.
Phlow was founded in early 2020 by Eric Edwards and Frank Gupton. The company grew out of Gupton’s work at the Medicines for All Institute at Virginia Commonwealth University and is part of the Alliance for Building Better Medicine, which aims to create a research and manufacturing hub in the Richmond-Petersburg region for essential medicines and their ingredients. The federal government through the Build Back Better Regional Challenge awarded the Richmond-Petersburg corridor a $52.9 million grant in 2022 to help make the region a hotbed of pharmaceutical manufacturing.
The local pharmaceutical manufacturing cluster recently missed out on a new round of funding from the federal government’s Tech Hubs program.
