IQGeo toasts heady double at Business Weekly Awards
Major category winners were Bicycle Therapeutics (Investment of the Year), bit.bio (Life Science Innovation), Cambridge Mechatronics Ltd (Disruptive Technology), Cellular Origins (The Pathfinder Award), CMR Surgical (International Trade), Echion Technologies (Tech Scale-Up), Ethicronics (Graduate Business of the Year), Healx (Life Science AI), Levidian (Sustainability Champion), Luminance (AI Innovation), Nuclera (Life Science Scale-Up), QPT (Young Company) and Secondmind (Sir Michael Marshall Engineering Excellence).
Serial technology entrepreneur and investor Dr Hermann Hauser, co-founder of Arm and Amadeus Capital Partners among many other enterprises, was guest speaker and also presented the crystal obelisks to the winners.
Lead forensic sponsor Mills & Reeve compiled special reports on the 52 initial shortlisted companies and lawyer Zickie Lim, Partner & Head of VC & Investments, introduced the Business of the Year Award which welcomed IQGeo into a coveted Hall of Fame stretching back to May 1990.
Lim said: “Telecomms, fibre and utility operators are building better networks with IQGeo’s award-winning geospatial software solutions. IQGeo has won a string of major new customer projects over the last 12 months including deals with household names in the fibre and electric utility industry.
“Its acquisition by KKR in the US is scheduled to go through in the next week or so and will facilitate a new surge of expansion. The really good news is that the new American owner has pledged to keep building the business internationally from a Cambridge HQ.”
PwC’s Simon de Young remarked on IQGeo’s incredible surge on the London Stock Exchange in recent times. He said: “In just 12 months its share price has shot from 152p to 480p. Just five years ago, as Ubisense, its London share price was 45p.
“Having recently been acquired for around $421 million, IQGeo is likely to be taken private so this is its last hurrah as a quoted company.”
Introducing the inaugural AI Innovation Award, Arm’s Kirsty Gill remarked: “Luminance employs a Large Language Model that has been purpose-built from its inception for legal-specific applications. Exposed to 150+ million verified legal documents, Luminance’s vast legal data flows, core proprietary AI and deep domain knowledge mean that it is regarded as the most advanced legal LLM today.”
The Life Science AI Award went to Healx and Barnaby Perks, CEO of St John’s Innovation Centre told how the company had recently raised $47 million Series C investment to progress its AI-powered lead program through clinical trials. The company develops patient-inspired treatments for rare diseases.
Ann Davidson of Cambridge Judge Entrepreneurship Centre hailed the winner of the Cambridge Graduate Business of the Year Award – Ethicronics. It specialises in delivering hardware assurance solutions to fabless companies within sectors such as Defence, Aerospace, Automotive, Finance and Telecomms.
The Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award, introduced by Hanadi Jabado of Sana Capital which backed the Award on behalf of Murray Edwards College, was won by Charlotte Guzzo – a Cambridge University alumna who formerly worked at Wellcome Sanger and is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Sano Genetics.
The company offers a 360° platform for recruitment, biomarker testing and long-term engagement which seamlessly connects workflows so a customer can focus on what matters most – finding new treatments for patients.
Jabado said: “Charlotte has helped Sano Genetics raise substantial capital and broaden both its commercial offering and partner collaborations. She is a role model for women in healthcare and technology and is genuinely inspirational.”
CMR Surgical, which makes the Versius robot arm for minimal access surgery from a facility in the Cluster, was a contender for many categories and was voted International Trade winner – an accolade introduced by Steve Brown of Barclays.
Brown said: “More than 22,000 operations have now been completed worldwide using Versius. For context, in mid-November 2022, CMR announced that more than 100 Versius systems were in use! Today more than 160 systems are being utilised and we are told demand is continuing to increase globally.”
The Young Company of the Year Award went to QPT, which is being driven by celebrated serial tech entrepreneur Rupert Baines. John Gourd, chief executive at Cambridge Network, told guests: “QPT markets itself as the first company to work out and patent a set of innovations that enable high power, high voltage GaN transistors to be used in Variable Frequency Drives at their ultrafast frequencies and thus unlock their full potential to deliver power savings.”
Cellular Origins won the Bruntwood SciTech Pathfinder Award. Aline Charpentier of Pathfinder backer Bruntwood SciTech explained: “Cellular Origins is building a scalable cell therapy automation manufacturing solution. It brings advanced robotics automation to cell therapy for the first time, enabling scale production that is closed, highly repeatable, data-rich and secure.”
Howard Group CEO Nicholas Bewes hosted the Disruptive Technology category and explained why Cambridge Science Park business Cambridge Mechatronics Limited so impressed.
He said: “A world leader in the design and control of Shape Memory Alloy actuators, CML is a multidisciplinary engineering company developing industry-leading precision motion solutions for use across a variety of markets, including smartphones, AR/VR, wearables and many more.”
CML is growing from Cambridge Science Park and CSP director Jane Hutchins had the honour of hailing the Sustainability Champion, Levidian. She said: “Levidian is a climate tech business on a mission to decarbonise the world’s most carbon-intensive industries. Powered by its patented LOOP technology, the company provides a comprehensive decarbonisation service that converts carbon liabilities into a competitive advantage, solving the dilemma between decarbonisation and business performance.”
Richard Howe, representing Marshall of Cambridge, outlined the Sir Michael Marshall Engineering Excellence Award which went to AutoTech company Secondmind. Howe said: “This summer, Secondmind received $16m in a funding round from investors, including its longstanding strategic partner, Mazda. Business Weekly expects to see further major, globally influential announcements from the company in the near future.”
Choosing the Investment of the Year winner proved tough – especially since Business Weekly was aware of substantial fundraisings leading contenders had exacted but were not in a position to publish.
It is highly doubtful whether those unpublished achievements would have topped the winning proposition of Bicycle Therapeutics, the transatlantic life science company steered from a Cambridge HQ.
Andrew Williamson, head at Cambridge Innovation Capital, remarked: “Near the end of May, Bicycle Therapeutics raised around $555 million from a new financing on the American market Nasdaq to take its cash runway into the second half of 2027.”
Echion Technologies was a worthy winner of the hotly contested Technology Scale-Up award introduced by Clennell Collingwood of TTP. Echion Technologies’ battery anode materials are acknowledged as delivering exceptionally long cycle life, superfast charging capability and outstanding safety.
Shaun Grady of AstraZeneca outlined the rationale behind the successes of the winning duo of two Life Science categories. The Life Science Innovation Award went to bit.bio, led by globally renowned and respected scientist Mark Kotter, and the Life Science Scale-Up prize to Nuclera – brilliantly steered by Michael Chen.
Grady said: “bit.bio is a synthetic biology pioneer coding human cells for novel cures; since spinning out from the University of Cambridge and launching in 2016, it has raised approximately $200m.
“The company is emerging as a global leader in creating and manufacturing human cells with unmatched precision and scale, enabling step change improvements in drug discovery, research and ultimately cell therapies. It looks to be on a path to making a positive difference for millions of patients.”
And of Nuclera he remarked: “Nuclera is the pioneer in bringing rapid protein prototyping to the benchtop. It makes proteins accessible through its benchtop protein system eProtein DiscoveryTM.
“Through its technology, it accelerates breakthrough improvements in human health and empowers life science researchers with easy access to target proteins.”
