Company Stories B-E

Stories that earlier appeared in Nelson's News

Bandgap (Columbia, SC)

Bandgap Technologies (Columbia, SC), a maker of SiC substrates, will be bought up by another private bandgap company INTRINSIC Semiconductor (Sterling VA) . Bangap was founded in 2000 and has had at least three Phase 2 SBIRs all funded by BMDO. Intrinsic had one BMDO Phase 1 in 2003. Bangap materials was recently highlighted in a new MDA Technology Applications report Through the Forbidden Band in which it was obvious that BMDO's only route to revolutionary technology is the SBIR program that existed before 2002.

Ballard Power Systems

Fuel Cell Future Moves Further Off. Ballard Power Systems is chopping 400 employees, or nearly 30% of its work force, cutting development spending and seeking buyers for parts of its business. Even by Ballard's own reckoning, profitability is still five years off, which means it has to conserve cash, develop other revenue streams and persuade investors to stay the course until its engine technology becomes commercially viable. [TAMSIN CARLISLE, Wall Street Journal, Dec 27] SBIR hopefuls with a commercialization story, take note. Your projections of commercial success are probably fantasy. The good news for getting the government money is that the government neither knows nor cares whether you are right or wrong. They get the technology whatever happens to you.

Barrier Therapeutics (Princeton, NJ)

The purchase of a New Jersey-based pharmaceutical company that currently outsources all of its manufacturing could be good news for the Stiefel Laboratories (Coral Gables, FL) plant here in Greene County. Stiefel said Monday it is offering [$148 million] for Barrier Therapeutics (Princeton, NJ; no SBIR). [Eric Anderson, Albany Times-Union, Jun 24]

Beacon Power

Beacon Power said it has signed a contract with American Electric Power to build a 1-megawatt smart energy matrix regulation facility at an AEP site in Groveport, Ohio [Boston Globe, Feb 23, 09]

Beacon Power received a commitment for the sale of $4.4 million worth of company warrants through a previously filed shelf registration statement. [Mass High Tech, Dec 22, 08] down 19%

Beacon Power received a commitment from an unnamed investor to raise $7.9 million through a private placement of stock and warrants under a previously filed a shelf registration. [Mass High Tech, Oct 10]

Beacon Power has been around for 10 years and has invested $150 million in the [flywheel] concept, with hardly any revenue to show for it so far. Now, the company is building its first large-scale commercial system, capable of storing and releasing 5 million watts of power. [Boston Globe, Sep 15]

Beacon Power wants to build a unique array of 200 flywheel batteries over several acres to store spare power from New York's electrical grid and zap it back as needed. ... to connect the 20-megawatt, short-term energy storage unit to New York's power grid in Stephentown, a rural community near the Massachusetts border. The company claims the matrix of batteries would make the grid more efficient and conserve energy, though they have some final hurdles to clear. [Boston Globe, Jun 14]

...the nation's first flywheel frequency regulation plant, in which an array of massive flywheels spinning at up to 16,000 revolutions per minute will help smooth the electrical grid. .... the $50 million flywheel plant by Beacon Power -- will regulate the grid without burning any fuel. Instead, 200 flywheels -- each a rotating disk standing 7 feet tall and 3 feet wide -- will spin using motors that draw excess energy from the grid when it is not needed. ... A 20-megawatt flywheel plant should prevent the release of up to 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year, [says Beacon]. [Brian Nearing, Albany Times-Union, May 13, 08]

Beacon Power (Wilmington MA) got a commitment for $25M in new funding from three of the company's previous investors [Mass High Tech, Oct 26]

Beacon Power up 12% on news of completed tests of a key product.

Fuel from Soybeans. A Chicago-area company with visions of becoming a biodiesel producer plans to build its first plant near Seymour, based on a new technology from India.

Beeco

A spinoff from RTI International that aims to make circuit boards obsolete has raised $5 million.... Beeco's challenge is convincing the market to adopt a game-changing technology. .... A reconfigurable computer, [CEO John ]Goehrke said, is one "that changes its configuration to maximize performance based on the application it is addressing." They're used in applications where "intense computing power is needed," such as gene sequencing. Beeco's computer is expected to cost $70,000 to $75,000 and is planned to hit the market in the third quarter of 2009. ... Goehrke is the former chief operating officer of Luna Innovations, a publicly traded company based in Blacksburg, Va [David Ranii, Raleigh News & Observer, Jun 10, 08]

Benefuel

Construction of the 10 million-gallon-a-year plant, which will cost under $20 million to build, could begin this year or early next, said Rob Tripp, chief executive of Benefuel, (Mt. Prospect, IL) which was formed last year. [Jeff Swiatek, Indianapolis Star, Oct 10] Benefuel's website claims the worlds most advanced, solid catalyst biodiesel refining platform ... and a business model of locating multiple, small refineries near the source of inputs and consumption. An economic note: the worldwide demand for fuel and food is driving up the price of both petroleum and crops. Eventually, the feedstock for such bio-source fuel plants will rise to make them unprofitable and a market shake-out will ensue. The tipping point is still unknown as the rush to produce ethanol and bio-diesel is still in full swing.

BetaBatt (Rochester, NY)

Start with a little tritium. The University of Rochester (NY) and a startup, BetaBatt< have cooked up a betavoltaics-based "nuclear" battery that can run for over a decade on the electrons generated by the natural decay of the radioactive isotope tritium. ... They've actually been tested in labs for 50 years -- but they generate so little power that a larger commercial role for them has yet to be found. So far, tritium-powered betavoltaics, which require minimal shielding and are unable to penetrate human skin, have been used to light exit signs and glow-in-the-dark watches. ... The fabrication techniques may be affordable, but the tritium itself -- a byproduct of nuclear power production -- is still more expensive than the lithium in your cell-phone battery. [Eric Brown, MIT Tech Review, Jun 16] Sounds straightforward until the question of where to get commercial tritium comes up. The quickest source would the nation's hydrogen bombs being destroyed. The Energy Department studies estimate the cost of a new tritium production for bombs would be several billions. But even if a commercially reasonable cost source could be found, the tritium is environmentally dangerous in groundwater, and the "no-more bomb" critics note that Using commercial reactors to produce tritium is unproven technology and thus poses unknown dangers.

BG Medicine (Waltham, MA)

BG Medicine (Waltham, MA; no SBIR) garnered $40 million in fourth-round funding for use in commercialization of its first two biomarker-based diagnostic tools. [Mass High Tech, Jul 17, 08]

BG Medicine (Waltham, MA; no SBIR) raised $40 million in its latest round of venture capital, in addition to $52 million it had previously raised. The company had originally tried to raise money through an initial public offering, but yanked the IPO filing in January citing market turmoil. No venture-backed companies have been able to go public so far this year in Massachusetts. BG, which has 39 employees, is trying to develop novel medical tests for congestive heart failure and other maladies based on proteins and other molecules found in the body. [Boston Globe, Jul 18]

Bind Bioscience (Cambridge MA)

Bind Bioscience (Cambridge MA; no prior SBIR) got a $150K NIH Phase 1 SBIR to advance a treatment for hormone refractory prostate cancer. ... was co-founded by MIT professor Robert Langer, has raised more than $2.5 million in VC seed capital [Mass High Tech, Oct 8, 07]

BioAdvanTek (Angola, IN)

BioAdvanTek (Angola, IN; founded in 2006) has developed an antimicrobial technology that can be incorporated into almost anything -- from grocery-cart handles to hospital supplies to children's toys. ... while not the first to tackle antimicrobial issues -- is the first that doesn't leach out of products and into the environment. ... not yet recorded any sales, but is working with a large manufacturer of an industrial-strength shrink- wrap-type product, as well as a "significant" orthopedic specialist. [Chuck Bowen, Indianapolis Star, Nov 20]

Bioanalytical Systems

Bioanalytical doubled [Nov 25, 08]

Bioanalytical Systems down 11% [Sep 26, 08]

Bioanalytical Systems up 11% [Sep 23, 08]

Bioanalytical Systems down 11% [Sep 9, 08]

Bioanalytical Systems down 10% [Jun 30, 08]

Bioanalytical Systems up 13% [Jun 27, 08]

Bioanalytical Systems up 27% [Jun 10, 08]

Bioanalytical Systems down 10% [Jan 14, 08]

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (Birmingham AL)

BioCryst Pharma up 19% [May 18, 09]

BioCryst Pharma up 32% [May 15, 09]

BioCryst down 18% [May 4, 09]

BioCryst Pharma down 10% [Apr 29, 09]

BioCryst Pharma up 76% [Apr 27, 09]

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals up 12% [Jul 28, 08] after the company said an injectible version of its experimental seasonal flu drug met a midstage study goal of alleviating symptoms. [AP]

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals up 14% [Mar 31, 08]

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals up 11% [Mar 26, 08]

BioCryst Pharma down 12% [Mar 10, 08]

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals up 11% [Feb 4, 08]

BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (Birmingham AL; $1M SBIR) down 32%, after an injectable formulation of a flu treatment failed to exhibit statistically significant improvement on placebo in a midstage clinical trial for the biopharmaceutical concern., Inc. is a biotechnology company that designs, optimizes and develops novel drugs that block key enzymes involved in cancer, cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune diseases and viral infections. [Wall Street Journal, Sep 21]

BioDelivery Sciences International

BioDelivery Sciences up 21% [Apr 21, 09]

BioDelivery Sciences down 12%% [Apr 3, 09]

BioDelivery Sciences up 10% [Mar 17, 09]

Biodelivery Sciences down 12% [Mar 2, 09]

Biodelivery Sciences up 13% [Dec 31, 08]

Biodelivery Sciences up 21% [Sep 19, 08]

BioDelivery Sciences International up 33% [Aug 29, 08]

Up 26% as U.S. regulators have laid the groundwork for approval of BioDelivery Sciences International�s first drug, the company said Thursday, though approval will take longer than the company would have liked. [Triangle Business Journal, Aug 28]

BioDelivery Sciences International up 17% [Jul 31, 08]

BioDelivery Science (Raleigh, NC; $1.5M SBIR) announced that its marketing partner has taken the first official step toward obtaining European Union approval of Bema Fentanyl, BioDelivery's experimental cancer pain drug. [Raleigh News&Observer, Apr, 3, 08]

BioDelivery Sciences up 24% [Dec 7, 07]

BioDelivery Sciences International lost 12% [Apr 18, 07]

BioDelivery Sciences International up 21% [Feb 22, 07] despite no news.

BioDelivery Sciences International rose 27% on report that the FDA approved human clinical testing of its Bioral drug delivery system.

BioE (Vadnais Heights, MN)

BioE (Vadnais Heights, MN; no SBIR) said it has won clearance from federal regulators to sell its signature product, a system that processes umbilical cord blood for use in treating a variety of diseases. ... the privately held company, which has been working with the [FDA] for more than seven years so it could sell the system in the USA. [Minneapolis Star Tribune, Jan 14, 09]

Bioheart (Sunrise FL)

Bioheart (Sunrise, FL; no SBIR) that has tried to sell shares for more than four months made a surprise debut on the Nasdaq .. raised $5.8M by selling 1.1 million shares for $5.25 a share -- far below the $57M it had hoped to raise by selling 3.6 million shares [Wall Street Journal, Feb 20, 08]

Bioheart and Elixir Biopharm going public this week. Neither used SBIR. [Jan 08]

Bioheart, (Sunrise FL: no SBIR) an�adult� stem-cell company has slashed its IPO price range � essentially halving the company�s expected market value. David Hamilton, over at VentureBeat Life Sciences, says: "I told you so: Eat your Bioheart out." The company's treatment is supposed to reverse damage caused by heart attacks. However, none of Bioheart�s data so far seems to suggest the treat does what it is supposed to do, and the company can�t even offer a plausible theory as to why it should work. [Matt Marshall, Venture Beat, Oct 12] The company's website says Our lead product candidate is MyoCell, an innovative clinical therapy designed to populate regions of scar tissue within a patient�s heart with autologous muscle cells, or cells from the patient�s body, for the purpose of improving cardiac function in chronic heart failure patients. The core technology used in MyoCell has been the subject of human clinical trials conducted over the last six years involving 84 enrollees and 70 treated patients In 2007 it reported Although not statistically significant due, in part, to the limited number of patients treated, the lead investigator indicated in his presentation that the safety of MyoCell is strongly suggested and the preliminary efficacy data demonstrates a trend towards an improvement in scores for six-minute walk distance, or Six-Minute Walk Distance, and an improvement in quality of life, or Quality of Life. If Hamilton's criticism is true, or even just credible, both the FDA and all but the most dreamy-eyed IPO investors should be able to see the problem. It does have a large and varied Scientific Advisory Board and several VCs on its board of directors.

Bio-Imaging Technologies

Bio-Imaging Technologies said it is selling its CapMed Division to Metavante Technologies (no SBIR) for $500,000 plus future payments over a two-year period. [Philadelphia Business Journal, Jan 7, 09]

Biolex Therapeutics

Biolex Therapeutics (Pittsboro, NC; no SBIR) has withdrawn its IPO plans. [Raleigh News&Observer, Feb 4, 08]

Biolex Therapeutics (Pittsboro, NC; no SBIR) with plans for a Wall Street debut could soon face financial straits that would force it to slash spending or look for other sources of cash. Biolex and its Dutch partner, OctoPlus, planned to raise money from public and private investors to pay for operations and to continue testing of Locteron, the Hepatitis C treatment the two companies are working on. [Sabine Vollmer, Raleigh News& Observer, Dec 13, 07]

The hosiery mill is gone now, along with much of the Carolina textile industry ... But the old brick building ... is occupied by a biotechnology company, Biolex Therapeutics (no SBIR) ... the retooling of this old brick building on Credle Street underscores how, despite its oft-pronounced demise, American manufacturing is in many regards stronger than ever. ... The United States makes more manufactured goods today than at any time in history, as measured by the dollar value of production adjusted for inflation -- three times as much as in the mid-1950s, the supposed heyday of American industry.. [Peter Goodman, Washington Post, Sep 3]

BioLink Life Sciences (Cary,NC)

Pharmaceutical developer BioLink Life Sciences (Cary, NC; $200K SBIR) was awarded three patents for four novel drugs for the treatment of epilepsy, bipolar disorder and migraine headaches. [Raleigh News & Observer, Sep 24, 08]

Biologics (Raleigh NC)

Private investment continues to boost young Triangle companies. Biologics (Raleigh NC; no SBIR) oncology pharmacy, $20M; . Aldagen (Durham NC; no SBIR) biotech company, $9 M; HyperBranch Medical Technologies (Durham NC; one SBIR) medical device startup, $1.5M. [Sabine Vollmer, Raleigh News & Observer, Sep 15] Those who can, do; those who can't or won't depend on government handouts.

BioMarin Pharmaceutical

BioMarin Pharma up 12% [Feb 24, 09]

BioMarin Pharma down 32% [Feb 19, 09]

BioMarin Pharma down 10% [Jan 20, 09]

BioMarin Pharma down 14% [Dec 1, 08] On a stock bloodbath day

Biomarin Pharma down 13% [Oct 27, 08]

BioMarin Pharma down 12% [Oct 23, 08]

BioMarin Pharma up 14% [Oct 13, 08]

Biomarin Pharma down 12% [Oct 10, 08]

Biomarin Pharma down 12% [Jun 23, 08]

BioMarin Pharmaceutical up 22% [Dec 14, 07] on news that the government approved its Kuvan treatment for use in slowing progression of an inherited disease called phenylketonuria. ... expects $35 -$70 M in revenue in 2008 from Kuvan

BioMarck Pharmaceuticals (Durham, NC)

BioMarck Pharmaceuticals (Durham, NC; $3M SBIR), which is working on new medicines for pulmonary diseases, has received $6.3 million from investors to complete a clinical trial of an experimental treatment for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Portions of a $3 million [NIH SBIR] grant is also helping to finance the trial. ... a spinoff of N.C. State University, is developing an experimental treatment that promises to control the mucus buildup and inflammation that accompany respiratory diseases such as COPD, asthma, chronic bronchitis and cystic fibrosis. If the drug receives regulatory approval, BioMarck plans to market it with the help of a large pharmaceutical partner. [Sabine Vollmer, Raleigh News & Observer, Apr 20, 09]

BioMedical Enterprises (San Antonio, TX)

Medical device company BioMedical Enterprises (San Antonio, TX, $0.5M SBIR). said that the company has launched a new implant on the market that is designed to approximate soft tissue that is anchored to bone. [San Antonio Business Journal, Jun 2]

BioMimetic Therapeutics

Confidence. A director of BioMimetic Thera bought $8M worth of shares. [Wall Street Journal, Apr 11, 09]

BioMimetic up 10% [Apr 8, 09]

BioMimetic Thera up 11% [Mar 3, 09]

BioMimetic up 11% [Feb 26, 09]

BioMimetic Thera up 10% [Jan 15, 09]

Biomimetic Thera down 10% [Jan 9, 09]

BioMimetic Tech up 25% [Nov 24, 08]

Biomimetic Thera up 13% [Nov 13, 08]

Biomimetic Thera up 10% [Nov 4, 08]

Biomimetic Thera up 12% [Oct 31, 08] and up 50% for the week.

Biomimetic Thera up 15% [Oct 30, 08]

Biomimetic Thera down 18% [Oct 15, 08]

BioMimetic Therapeutics down 10% [Oct 6, 08]

Biomimetic Thera down 14% [Oct 9, 08]

BioMimetic Therapeutics up 12% [Apr 3, 08]

BioMimetic Therapeutics up 30% [Mar 28, 08] as Wall Street brushed off anxiety over Food and Drug Administration concerns linking a competitor's diabetic foot ulcer treatment to higher cancer risk. [AP]

BioMimetic Therapeutics down 56% [Mar 27, 08]

BioMimetic Therapeutics up 11 % after announcing a 30% earnings increase in the fourth quarter

BioMimetic Therapeutics announced a 30% earnings increase in the fourth quarter over a year ago ... "This past year has been an extraordinary one for BioMimetic; we advanced our lead orthopedic product candidate into pivotal clinical trials in the U.S., EU and Canada while efficiently raising capital, giving us nearly $100 million in cash," says Dr. Samuel Lynch, president and CEO [Nashville Business Journal, Mar 20, 08] but still fell 11%.

BioMimetic Therapeutics up 10% after the company said its system for fusing damaged bones had a 90% success rate

BioNanomatrix (Philadelphia, PA)

In the corner of the small lab is a locked door with a colorful sign taped to the front: "$100 Genome Room--Authorized Persons Only." BioNanomatrix (Philadelphia, PA $800K SBIR), the startup that runs the lab, is pursuing what many believe to be the key to personalized medicine: sequencing technology so fast and cheap that an entire human genome can be read in eight hours for $100 or less. [Lauren Gravitz, MIT Tech Review, M/A09] One of MIT's nominees for hot technologies of 2009.

Biophan Technologies

Biophan Technologies (West Henrietta, NY; one SBIR) said a prepayment agreement would eliminate $2.3 million in senior debt, leaving the company with cash available for a year. .... calls itself a technology development and holding company focused on the creation and sale of novel patent-protected technologies and medical devices. [Rochester Business Journal, Sep 24, 08]

Biophan Technologies (West Henrietta, NY; one SBIR) said it has acquired the patent portfolio (more than 15 issued patents) of Nanoset LLC (no SBIR), a private company. ... Biophan�s stock was trading slightly above 3 cents a share, up nearly 3 percent. [Rochester Business Journal, May 13,08]

BioProcessors (Woburn, MA)

Biotech materials company Seahorse Bioscience (no SBIR). has taken in $6 million in a Series D round of funding, to help it purchase BioProcessors .(Woburn, MA; $600K SBIR) maker of systems for improving biologic drug manufacturing. [Mass High Tech, Mar 10, 09]

Biopure

Biopure reports that it has signed an agreement for a private placement of a package of common stock and warrants for up to $2.3 M, which the Cambridge-based maker of oxygen therapeutic blood replacement products says it will use for working capital and general corporate purposes. [Mass High Tech, Jul 3, 08]

Biopure lays off 50, needs cash to stay open past fall [Boston Globe, Jun 21]

Biopure, a developer of blood-replacement therapies, reports it has succeeded in defending its European patent for a purification process [Mass High Tech, May 19, 08]

Biopure reports the Naval Medical Research Center (NMRC) has landed $3.4 million from the DOD to develop its Hemopure product. [Mass High Tech, May 8] Even though it is all government money for government purposes, it still qualifies for commercialization because it is creating economic activity downstream of the SBIR.

Biopure regained its nominal stock price range by a 1:5 reverse split. [Oct 2, 07]

Biopure says that an FDA committee has recommended denial of the Navy's proposal to conduct a Phase 2b/3 clinical trial of the company's blood replacement product, Hemopure. The committee did recommend continuation of small scale experiments on the project to extract the goodies from cows' blood. [Mass High Tech, Dec 15] The stock took another 24% dive but is already below the buck and a far, far reach from its 2000 bubble high near 300 (adjusted for the 1:6 reverse split in 2005).

Biopure will raise $14M in stock and warrants. [Dec 06]

An independent safety board has cleared Biopure to continue a Phase 2 trial of its Hemopure blood-oxygen treatment after reviewing preliminary results from the study, according to company officials. [Mass High Tech, Nov 7, 06] The stock traders were not impressed.

Biopure says that NASDAQ is on the verge of delisting the stock for failng to maintain a buck price for 30 days. Days ago, the company said it was selling another $55M of securities. Biopure had a trickle of SBIR in the 1990s.

BioSentinel Pharmaceuticals (Madison, WI)

BioSentinel Pharmaceuticals (Madison, WI; no SBIR) said Tuesday it has released a new test to detect the most deadly strains of botulinum toxin. The BoTest offers a nearly 300-fold increase in sensitivity compared to other tests on the market for detecting botulinum neurotoxin, one of the most deadly toxins in the world, the Madison company said. BoTest is the start-up company's first commercial product. "BioSentinel's groundbreaking assay will help protect our citizens at home and our troops in the field, and the expanded research opportunities hold much promise for future health care benefits," U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) said in a statement. Baldwin helped secure federal funds for BioSentinel's research. [Kathleen Gallagher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Apr 29, 09]

BioSystem

BioSystem Development (Madison WI, no SBIR) pulled in $600,000 in a second financing round ... George Mosher, a Silicon Pastures member and BioSystem investor. Mosher says he has put money into over 40 young companies since he sold Milwaukee-based National Business Furniture in 2006 to K+K America for $82 million. [Kathleen Gallagher, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Nov 2, 07]

"BioSystem has a very committed founder who is committed to making the company a success, has an incredible Rolodex and knows how to get his foot in the door at pharmaceutical companies. And he has a lot of credibility because he's worked in start-ups previously," said Teresa Esser, managing director of Silicon Pastures. [Kathleen Gallagher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jan 9] BioSystem got a $700K angel investment after a top prize in the Governor's Business Plan Contest in 2004.

BioTrove (Woburn, MA)

BioTrove (Waltham, MA; noSBIR) elected to withdraw its registration for a $75 million IPO. [Mass High Tech, Dec 18, 08]

BioTrove (Woburn, MA; no SBIR) which makes systems used to analyze genetic information and chemical compounds, plans an initial public offering of common stock, [Boston Globe, Apr 1, 08]

Bitstream

Bitstream (no SBIR) fell 31% after reporting lower profits. It makes Internet browsers and special fonts for wireless devices

Black Sand (Austin TX)

Austin Ventures figures that Black Sand (Austin TX; no SBIR) will be one of those rare chip companies that doesn't need a huge infusion of money or people to achieve its first product design. Typically, it takes $20 M or more to develop a chip prototype. Black Sand just completed raising $8.2 M in its first investment round ... That's expected to be long enough for designs to be completed for chips that will change the way cell phones and other wireless devices amplify the signals for voice and data transmissions. Experts in the field call it one of the toughest design challenges in the wireless business. [Kirk Ladendorf, Austin American-Statesman, Oct 1]

Black Sand has its own tight team of brilliant engineers, most of whom formerly worked for Silicon Labs (no SBIR) ... another genius bet by Austin Ventures in 1996 when three brilliant chip engineers bolted from Cirrus Logic to start their own company. That startup turned out to be Silicon Laboratories ... the most successful home-grown chip company in Austin and one of the biggest investment payoffs for Austin Ventures. [Kirk Ladendorf, Austin American-Statesman, Oct 1]

BladeLogic

Automation-software firm BladeLogic Inc. outshined three other new stocks yesterday [Jul 25, 07] continuing the strong showing of IPOs from the technology sector. BladeLogic soared 47% on its first day of trading. [Wall Street Journal, Jul 26]

Battery Ventures, Waltham MA VC firm, has two IPOs in the next two weeks: Netezza (Framingham, MA) and BladeLogic (Waltham, MA). [Boston Globe, Jul 13] Neither did SBIR.

Bluefin Robotics (Cambridge MA)

Bluefin Robotics (Cambridge, MA; $2M SBIR) reports it has reeled in a contract for its spray glider autonomous underwater vehicle from Horizon Marine (Marion, MA; one 1991 SBIR). ... In February, the Navy exercised an option on a previously awarded contract, worth a potential $29 million, with Bluefin for its Bluefin-9 mine-detecting AUV. [Jul 08]

Bluefin Robotics (Cambridge MA; $2M SBIR) reports it has established worldwide distribution agreements for sales and support of its autonomous underwater vehicles, pressure-tolerant subsea lithium polymer batteries and related technologies [Mass High Tech, Nov 15]

BlueSky Batteries (Laramie, WY)

Blue Sky Batteries, A Nice Life
Blue Sky BatteriesBlue Sky Batteries was formed in 1998 with the close support of friend and mentor Professor Dan Buttry, at the University of Wyoming. I am a 1995 graduate in Chemistry and spent 1996 and 1997 working as assistant professor at the Tokyo University (a "see the world" and "eat interesting things" post). While BSBI was started in order to do contract research for a specific customer, intellectual property conflicts became a serious issue, so BSBI chose instead to shift to independent, product-oriented R&D . A BSBI SBIR proposal to NIH on rechargeable energy storage devices for circulatory support devices. Other technical activities at BSBI also have evolved, including catalyst work for electric vehicle fuel cells, materials work directed at Navy propulsion systems, and phosphor development for flat panel and other high-end display markets. It's starting to look like we need a more general name! The tools which BSBI uses to pursue those opportunities includes nano-engineering of materials to produce desired properties/behaviors, coupled in some cases with combinatorial (that is, very fast) materials development techniques. Also, BSBI is in ongoing negotiations with a Silicon Valley mezzanine-level company to acquire their unique technology. The financing strategy for BSBI has involved, first, pursuit of government funding sources followed by private sources. At the same time, BSBI plans to leverage available resources and minimize its burn rate, in order to avoid high capitalization requirements and consequent dilution of ownership. We think that these strategies will lead BSBI to success, and retain high ownership of the company in Wyoming. To date, BSBI has submitted 8 proposals for $739K for research on our unique innovations with $133K earmarked for subcontracts to UW. Financing disadvantages that BSBI has experienced due to being located in Wyoming have been offset somewhat by the national funding opportunities detailed and by $5,000 by the Wyoming Business Council. We think that program is a crucial tool for encouraging Wyoming participation in SBIR competitions, especially for boot-strap companies such as ours. However, BSBI's most important resource is its people and their diverse but complementary skills. For instance, a team approach (establishing lead writers, using weekly follow-up meetings, and having substantial Interaction and cooperation between team members) was crucial to achieving our December and January proposal submission goals. BSBI's team now includes John Ackerman, Dan Buttry, Linda Cahill (a San Francisco-based finance and business strategist), Kevin Gaw (a materials engineer recently relocated to Laramie to support BSBI, now living in my laundry room). Scott Paulson (an inorganic chemist based in Calgary) is also a key member of our team, as well as the Laramie High-Technology Incubator (LINC), UW (especially Bill Gern), and the WBC (especially Mike Petera), through their support efforts. Imminent additions to the team include the Western Research Institute and a public relations expert. Strong sponsors of our efforts so far include Keith Carron (supplied substantial SBIR and business advice, spotted BSBI rent money at LINC for over six months, and loaned a computer), Dean Roddick (donated an old modem), and Gene Watson (supplied free but valuable business advice). The principals of BSBI choose to be located in Wyoming, if at all possible. High-quality people, business and technology resources, transportation and information infrastructure, and start-up experience are all available here at very low cost, and the Rocky Mountain quality-of-life is unmatched in the U.S. Dr. John Pope, President Blue Sky Batteries, Inc. Laramie, WY, 307-755-6490/307-766-3041 FAX: 307-766-2807 Email: j1@csi.com
OK, it's a a heartwarming all-American story told in the pages of Wyoming Newsletter. Nice people in a nice place doing nice things. But, where is there a federal interest in handing them federal tax money for enjoy their life-style? Are you merely lowering your cost of capital at public expense? What is it about your "research" that warrants government intrusion into the competition for capital? Having an interesting tech idea is not enough. Good ideas with market potential find capital; bad ideas appeal for government support. There are some criteria for government intervention; which do you meet? Being a small company with smart scientists is not enough by itself. Thousands of such companies are out there without government support and doing just fine. Etc, etc. What are the SBIR promoters offering as the excuse for government support in Wyoming? In California? Soft squishy stuff about the virtue of small business without any hard economics to back the claims. As soon as the Congress dispenses with the impeachment diversion, it can start to consider SBIR reauthorization required before this Congress ends in Oct 2000. If Wyoming wants to gamble its money on attracting federal funds for life-style companies, that's Wyoming's business. But the federal government cannot be a party to it. Or at least federal fairness would demand so; actual federal politics will guarantee some less than fair approach encouraged by the free-market Republicans from the mythical rough-and-tumble West of federally supported ranchers.

Bluewater Bio International

DANIEL ISHAG, an entrepreneur who made tens of millions by selling his online advertising business, is to float a biological company with technology that can cleanse waste water. Bluewater Bio International is aiming to float on the Alternative Investment Market in the next few weeks, valuing the business at about �25m. ... Its technology uses bacteria found naturally in soil to cleanse waste water. It claims to remove 99% of biological contamination in waste water and to be more effective than other nitrogen and phosphate systems. [The Sunday Times, Nov 25]

Boston Dynamics (Cambridge MA)

The BigDog four-legged robot made by Boston Dynamics (Waltham, MA; $2.5M SBIR) set a new autonomous distance record for legged robots last year by traveling 12.8 miles without human intervention. And the Defense Department-funded robot recently spent some time undergoing tests at Ft. Benning, Ga., according to a video from the Ft. Benning news site the Benning Report. [Mass High Tech, Feb 27, 09]

Boston Dynamics (Cambridge MA; $2.5M SBIR) got a $10M DARPA contract for the development of a dog-like robot - run, maneuver and jump to avoid obstacles- with a shot at $40M in follow-on Navy contracts. [Mass High Tech, Aug 3] The company calls itself the leading provider of human simulation software, tools, and solutions

Boston Micromachines

Boston Micromachines ($2M SBIR) has paired with California-based Thorlabs (no SBIR) to develop a new Adaptive Optics (AO) toolkit aimed at making such technologies easier and cheaper for researchers, according to executives [Mass High Tech, Jan 21]

Boston Micromachines (Watertown MA) got a $600,000 Phase 2 SBIR from NASA. No record of prior SBIRs. [Mass High Tech, Nov 1, 06]

Boston-Power

Boston-Power reports it has raised $55 million in new funding, which the Westborough-based company says it will use to ramp up manufacturing, sales, marketing, and research and development efforts for its Sonata Lithium-ion batteries. ... This Series D round brings Boston-Power�s total funding to $125 million since it was founded in 2005 [Mass High Tech, Jan 14, 09]

next-generation lithium-ion battery [company website] Boston-Power (Westborough, MA; no SBIR) raised an additional $45M in funding from VC firms ... previously raised $24.7M. [Wall Street Journal, Jan 3] Frost & Sullivan 2007 technology innovation of the year award

Boundless (Boulder, CO)

NASA will test energized structures devised by Boundless ( Boulder, CO) wherein part of the spacecraft structure is a battery. At least some of the development came from MDA Phase 2 SBIR. Read the story from . Why, do you suppose, did NASA never fund an SBIR for the technology? Too much risk? If not to take technical risks, what does NASA do with its SBIR? Add incremental bricks to its temple of knowledge?

Brashear

Brashear, a big old little company with at least two recent MDA Phase 2 SBIRs is being bought by biggie L-3 Communications for $36M hard cash. The abstracts for the two MDA awards suggests the $1.4M went for relatively advanced engineering of militarily useful mirrors. The press release describes Brashear as a leading developer and supplier of complex electro-optical systems for military and international customers, as well as prime aerospace contractors. In operation for over 120 years, the company designs and manufactures electro optical systems including, laser ranging and tracking systems, test range instrumentation, telescope systems, naval fire control systems and laser beam directors. Hardly the struggling entrepreneur that needs a nursery stage boost to jump start a new technology.

Brewer Science (Rolla, MO)

Brewer Science (Rolla, MO) won an ATP grant to develop Contact Planarization for IC manufacturers to flatten the layers produced in making an integrated circuit chip. Brewer says the dominant method to achieve such planarization in use today is chemical mechanical planarization (CMP), expensive, but also wasteful of materials, energy and environmental resources. Contact Planarization will facilitate true independence from feature size and density effects. also a reduction in cost of ownership as well as environmental impact, a smaller clean room footprint, improved throughput and planarization performance. .. it will cost one half what CMP costs to process a wafer. If trends in wafer production continue, at an annual growth rate of 10%, the savings could reach nearly half a billion dollars ($470M) per year by the end of 2003 and close in on $1B shortly thereafter. The CPT has been licensed from Agere Systems. Brewer has had about $5M in SBIR Phase 2s from BMDO, AF, and NSF, although the chances of BMDO's getting any more BMDO funding for such indirect technology will have to wait for another BMDO change of attitude toward innovation.

Bright View (Morrisville, NC)

Bright View Technologies (Morrisville, NC; no SBIR) has raised $4 million to boost the manufacturing and marketing of its first products.The -based company, founded in 2003 using technology licensed from Duke University, began shipping its first product -- a component for LED lighting fixtures -- at the end of last year. .... 45-employee company ... has raised $34 million in financing. [David Ranii, Raleigh News & Observer, Apr 23, 09]

Bright View (Morrisville, NC; no SBIR) that has devoted five years to developing a line of components used in TV screens and computer monitors has raised $11 to launch its first products. ... co-founded in 2003 by Ed Fadel and David Reed, based on technology licensed from Duke University. ... To date the company has raised $30 million in financing. [David Ranii, Raleigh News & Observer, Jun 15, 08]

Brimrose Corp of America (Baltimore, MD)

Australia, Canada, Germany. Korea, Japan, UK, Israel, Italy, Poland. Not a world tour: the places where Brimrose Corp of America has reps for its acousto-optic products that started with a BMDO SBIR in 1986. Add Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Malaysia, Holland, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, and Taiwan for the spectroscopic products. With that lineup, founder Ron Rosemeier must know a lot about airplanes.

New and Improved Bleaches With the Luminar 2000 by Brimrose Corp of America bleach makers can (and at least one is) control hypochlorite concentration during manufacture. Hypochlorite carries the oxygen that does the bleaching. The 2000 derived from Acousto-Optic Tunable Filters developed for SDIO (remember?) as anti-missile discriminators in the nose of interceptors. The AOTFs though have made a nice commercial living for both fast-exploiting Brimrose and Ciencia (East Hartford, CT). For hypochlorite inspection, see the Application Note by Brimrose.

Brock Rogers Surgical (Waltham, MA)

Fast Track Surgery Funded by grant money from DARPA's telemedicine program, closed a first-round private placement in July 97 from private investors and Seaflower Associates. Total capital raised $1.1M. Prerevenue. Says The Red Herring about Brock Rogers Surgical (Waltham, MA). The DARPA money was a Fast Track SBIR for a two-armed robot for surgery with lots of fancy software. Wonderful story for seven-employee firm? Did the government just substitute for market financing and do nothing more than lower the cost of capital (not a legitimate government function)? Don't expect any SBIR advocate or beneficiary to admit it even if it's true. They think any government money is good. One competitor is MicroDexterity Systems which got NASA and NIH funding. A third competitor Intuitive Surgical Systems had to go to bed without a government bone.

Bruker Daltonics

DHS gave Bruker Daltonics (no DHS SBIRs), a subsidiary of Bruker BioSciences ($436M in 2006 revenue) a $1.3 M a Phase 3, three-year research contract for its chemical detection technology. [Mass High Tech, Sep 14]

C9 (Saratoga NY)

C9 will make a new generation of silicon carbide chips at the Saratoga (NY) Technology & Energy Park. .... with help from the state's $1.75M ... C9's products now are made at the facilities of FALA and Nanodynamics (New York City; $6M SBIR) and the firms already have invested $11M into silicon carbide research. [Alan Wechsler, Albany Times-Union, Jul 28]

Calando Pharmaceuticals (Pasadena, CA)

Calando Pharmaceuticals (Pasadena, CA; one SBIR) is also packing nanoparticles with a substance previously too dangerous to use. In this case the drug is called camptothecin, and the nanoparticle is made from a strand of sugar molecules. As the camptothecin is attached to the sugar molecules, the strand folds up into a sphere, hiding the drug inside as a clenched fist might hide a pea. [The Economist, Nov 8, 08]

Calient (San Jose, CA)

CALIENT READY FOR MONSTER FUNDING Calient Networks (San Jose, CA), a startup that makes all-optical switches based on MEMS technology, is several days away from closing on a third round of financing in excess of $150 million. It's a monster round.After asking for a $1.5B pre-money, the company settled for a $750M pre-money. MEMS technology, which uses a compact array of tiny mirrors to switch beams of light, is one of several possible approaches to building large, all-optical switches. Calient officials claim its product,expected to enter customer trials in the next few weeks, can pack a complete 1,000 by 1,000 port optical switch into a box the size of a kitchen drawer. After asking for a $1.5B pre-money, the company settled for a $750M pre-money. MEMS technology, which uses a compact array of tiny mirrors to switch beams of light, is one of several possible approaches to building large, all-optical switches. Calient officials claim its product, expected to enter customer trials in the next few weeks, can pack a complete 1,000 by 1,000 port optical switch into a box the size of a kitchen drawer. [R. Scott Raynovich, Light Reading, rayno@lightreading.com] See the full story . How much SBIR did Calient need to get started? Hah!

Caliper Life Sciences

Caliper Life Sciences (Hopkinton, MA; one SBIR) which makes software used for drug development, today said it will cross-license technology with AntiCancer (San Diego, CA; no SBIR) in order to settle a patent lawsuit. Caliper gains the rights to sublicense AntiCancer�s protein optical imaging patents to third parties. San Diego-based AntiCancer obtains rights to license Caliper�s fluorescent protein imaging patents to a specified number of third parties. That figure was not disclosed. [Boston Globe, Feb 28]

CaliSolar (Sunnyvale, CA)

solar-power startups in particular have seen a three-year surge, from a low of no venture investment in the third quarter of 2005 to a high of more than half a billion dollars in the second quarter of this year. CaliSolar (Sunnyvale, CA; no SBIR) $13M; Wakonda Technologies (Fairport, NY; $200K SBIR) $9M; Prism Solar Technologies (Lake Katrine, NY; no SBIR) $9M. [Dean Takahashi, MIT Tech Review, S/O 08]

Calistoga Pharmaceuticals (Seattle, WA)

Cancer and inflammatory disease company Calistoga Pharmaceuticals (Seattle, WA; no SBIR) said it�s raised $30 million in a second round of financing. ... formed two years ago after being spun off from former local biotech Icos Corp (no SBIR). In 2007, it raised $26 million in its first round of financing. [Puget Sound Business Journal, May 5, 09]

Caltech Metals (San Diego CA)

Caltech Metals (San Diego CA; no SBIR) is making more durable sheet metal that resembles corrugated cardboard. On the outside are thin steel layers. Sandwiched in between is a rippled layer created by crinkling steel into waves. The resulting product is the same thickness as sheet metal, but half the weight and more than three times as strong. It could be cheaper and better than aluminum in automobile hoods, fenders, and other parts, says CellTech CEO Doug Cox. [Business Week, Oct 22, 07]

Cambridge Heart (Bedford, MA)

Cambridge Heart (Bedford, MA; no SBIR) got bad news that a diagnostic test intended to identify patients who should receive heart defibrillators did not produce conclusive data [Boston Globe, Nov 7, 07]

Candela

Candela up 10% [Feb 25, 08]

Candela down 15% [Jan 30, 08]

Candela up 10% [Jan 29, 08]

Candela Laser jumped 26% after announcing a big profit gain. [Oct 26, 06]

Candela Laser was down 29% for the week after reporting lower profits. [Aug, 06]

Candela Laser took a 32% whack when it reported earnings below expectations. CEO Puorro laid much of the blame on "aggressive pricing" of a new product and forecast healthier revenue for the next quarter.. [spring 04]

Candela paid the price for a poor profit report as traders knocked a third of the price in a day. Make bigger profit or get your PE knocked down to low numbers, Candela now trading at nine times earnings. Just two weeks ago a pundit opined that "Candela's revenues and earnings are growing at a fantastic pace. The growth Candela is experiencing may be sustainable," said Jack Ellis, founder of The Savvy Analyst, an interactive, online equities research firm.

Candela, a user of SBIR a decade ago, bought the assets of Applied Optronics, a subsidiary of Schwartz Electro-Optics, a long-time and continuing beneficiary of SBIR, for $1.2M. [Mass High Tech, Jan 9.03]

Capnia (Palo Alto, CA)

Capnia (Palo Alto, CA), which delivers carbon dioxide through a patient's nose to treat maladies like migraines and rhinitis, has raised $16 M of a potential $19 M round of funding. [Venture Beat: San Jose Mercury News, Apr 30]

Cara Therapeutics (Shelton, CT)

Cara Therapeutics (Shelton, CT; no SBIR) received the largest single investment, $12 million in fourth-round financing. [Hartford Courant, Oct 18,08]

Cara Therapeutics (Shelton, CT; no SBIR) closed on $12.3 million of additional funding to a Series C financing. ...received a US patent for CR845, which is being developed as a treatment for acute and chronic pain of visceral, inflammatory and neuropathic origin, and treatment for itching associated with several diseases and conditions. [Mass High Tech, Jul 25, 08]

Carbon Design Systems (Waltham, MA)

Carbon Design Systems (Waltham, MA; no SBIR) reports closing a $6M Series E round of funding, increasing the total amount of venture capital raised by the company to $34M , officials said. ... develops tools to create virtual hardware models [Mass High Tech, Jan 11, 08]

Cardiac Concepts

Medical devices start-ups powered Minnesota to the best quarterly VC performance in eight years just as a sagging economy curbed venture spending across the country. ... Seven medical device firms captured $130 million, led by CVRx (Brooklyn Park, MN; no SBIR) that makes a device that treats high blood pressure, raised $84 million on top of the $200 million investors have already poured into the company. Cardiac Concepts (no SBIR) first-round financing totaled a hefty $21 million. ... Other notable deals: Proto Labs (Maple Plain, MN; no SBIR) -based maker of injection molded products, attracted $67.2 million. Sage Electrochromics (Faribault, MN; $2M SBIR) raised $13.3 million, which makes glass that influences building temperatures, previously won $16 million in venture financing. [Minneapolis Star Tribune, Oct 26, 08]

Cardiac Dimensions (Kirkland, WA)

Cardiac Dimensions (Kirkland, WA; no SBIR) raised $35.5 M VC ... builds devices designed for treating heart-related conditions [Seattle Times, Dec 19, 07]

CardiAQ Valve Technologies (Winchester, MA)

startup CardiAQ Valve Technologies (Winchester, MA; no SBIR; founded 2007) has raised an additional $109,000 for an existing recent financing round, according to officials at the company. CardiAQ is developing a new medical approach to allow doctors to use a special catheter to implant a mitral valve in a beating heart. This permits the patient to avoid undergoing open heart surgery, thus reducing the risk and cost to both the patient and the health-care provider, claimed the company. Earlier this month, the firm announced it had been awarded $750,000 in [private] translational funding [Marc Songini, Mass High Tech, May 21]

CardiAQ Valve Technologies (Winchester, MA; no SBIR) received $750,000 in seed cash from Broadview Ventures Inc. .... developing a new approach that allows doctors, using a special catheter, to implant a mitral valve in a beating heart. This permits the patient to avoid undergoing open heart surgery, and reduces the risk and cost to both the patient and the health-care provider, claimed the company. [Mass High Tech, May 13]

Cardica (Redwood City, CA)

Cardica down 11% [May 6, 09]

Cardica up 14% [May 4, 09]

Cardica up 10% [Apr 24, 09]

Cardica down 11% [Feb 20, 09]

Cardica up 22% [Jan 28, 09]

Cardica up 31% [Nov 26, 08]

Cardica down 15% [Nov 25, 08]

Cardica up 28% [Nov 24, 08]

Cardica down 11% [Nov 17, 08]

Cardica up 13% [Nov 4, 08]

Cardica up 17% [Oct 16, 08]

Cardica down 15% [Oct 6, 08]

Cardica up 26% [Sep 9, 08] after the FDA approved the surgical system maker's PAS-Port system for use in cardiac bypass surgery [AP]

Cardica up 14% [Jul 23, 08] . Motley Fool's group grope - CAPS investor intelligence database - called it ready to roar after a 20% rise in the second quarter.

Cardica up 35% [Jun 10, 08]

Cardica up 11% [Apr 21, 08] on results from a six-month economic analysis comparing the cost of off-pump, "beating heart" coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) procedures, which were performed using the C-Port� Distal Anastomosis Systems, with the cost of traditional on-pump CABG surgery. The study showed that beating heart CABG saved $1,684 per procedure, inclusive of the cost of the C-Port systems in the beating heart cases, compared to traditional bypass surgery. [company press release]

Cardica down 12% [Apr 14, 08]

Cardica up 14% [Mar 24, 08]

Cardica up 17% [Mar 11, 08]

Cardica down 10% [Mar 10, 08]

Cardica down 11% [Mar 7, 08]

Cardica down 12% [Jan 25, 08]

Cardica down 15% [Dec 11, 07]

Cardica down 13% [Nov 12, 07]

Cardica down 10% [Nov 9, 07] after pricing a secondary at just over half its 12-month high.

Cardica down 14% [Oct 26, 07]

Cardica up 11% [Oct 8, 07]

Cardica up 16% as European regulators approved a new variation of a device used in heart surgery.

Cardica (Redwood City, CA; one Phase 1 SBIR) tumbled 15% after a broker cut its rating on shares of the developer of technological surgery aids to sell, saying exuberance about closed-chest heart-bypass surgery products was premature. [Wall Street Journal, Sep 11]

CardioFocus (Marlborough, MA)

CardioFocus (Marlborough, MA; one Phase 1 SBIR) raised $9 million in a Series C round, and appears to still be in development of a product to treat a common cardiac arrhythmia. [Mass High Tech,Jun 20,08]

CardioMag (Schenectady, NY)

A Little Short. CardioMag Imaging (Schenectady, NY; $700K SBIR) preliminary results, due June 25, will show it lost $5 million last year and has just $600,000 in cash ... Carl Rosner, CardioMag's president and chief executive officer, is providing $2M in bridge financing in a loan to the company that carries 8% interest and is convertible to common stock. The company, meanwhile, plans a replacement for Rosner. [Eric Anderson, Albany Times-Union, Jun 19] The stock dove 90% on the London Exchange.

CardioMag Imaging (Schnenectady NY) says there's nothing else in the world like its heart-health scanner. But until insurance companies recognize the value of its early detection of heart problems, hospitals and other potential customers have been hesitant to purchase the machines, which can cost $550,000 ... CardioMag got a boost earlier this month when the machine was a runner-up in the medical devices category of The Wall Street Journal's annual technology innovation awards competition. [Eric Anderson, Albany Times Union, Oct 17] CardioMag has had at least one Phase 2 SBIR for its magento wonder machine.

Cardiosolutions (Stoughton, MA)

Cardiosolutions (Stoughton, MA) raised $7M in VC. It is one of a family of start-ups by STD Med Inc., a developer and manufacturer of medical devices. Other firms so founded are Agiolink, Arthrosurface, and Spirus Medical. None have a record of SBIR. [Mass High Tech, Sep 26, 07]

CardioSpectra (San Antonio, TX)

CardioSpectra (San Antonio, TX; no SBIR) one of the first companies to receive money from the Texas Emerging Technology Fund, has become the first to be acquired. ... $1.35M from the state fund in mid-2006, part of the approximately $5 million in investment it has received. ...to be acquired for $25M in cash by Volcano (Rancho Cordova, CA; no SBIR), a medical devices company. [Austin American-Statesman, Dec 12]

CardioTech (Wilmington, MA)

CardioTech (Woburn, MA; $1M+ SBIR) sold its Catheter and Disposables Technology Inc. subsidiary in Minnesota to Tacpro Inc. for $1.2 million in cash. [Mass High Tech, Apr 1, 08]

CardioTech (Wilmington, MA; $1.2M SBIR) hired an investment banker that will help it evaluate strategic alternatives for its Catheter and Disposables Technology (CDT) business, which is based in Plymouth, Minn. CDT designs and provides contract manufacturing services for medical devices. [Mass High Tech, Feb 22, 08]

Carigent Therapeutics (New Haven, CT)

Carigent Therapeutics (New Haven, CT; no SBIR) reports it has closed on the second tranche of a $2 M ... from Saint Simeon Marketing and Investments Lda of Portugal ... Carigent's products are based on nanotechnology that was licensed in 2006 from Yale University . [Mass High Tech, Dec 11]

Cascade Microtech (Beaverton, OR)

Cascade Microtech up 16% [May 29, 09]

Cascade Microtech up 19% [Apr 8, 09]

Cascade Microtech down 13% [Apr 6, 09]

Cascade Microtech up 10%% [Apr 2, 09]

Cascade Microtech up 26% [Mar 27, 09]

Cascade Microtech down 23% [Mar 9, 09]

Cascade Microtech down 10% [Jan 26, 09]

Cascade Microtech up 10% [Jan 23, 09]

Cascade Microtech up 41% [Jan 6, 09]

Cascade Micotech up 13% [Oct 29, 08]

Cascade Microtech down 20% [Oct 24, 08]

Cascade Microtech up 20% [Oct 20, 08]

Cascade Microtech up 13% [Oct 15, 08]

Cascade Microtech up 10% [Oct 13, 08]

Cascade Microtech down 22% [Oct 10, 08]

Cascade Microtech down 13% [Sep 29, 08]

Cascade Microtech down 21% [Sep 22, 08]

Cascade Microtech up 23% [Sep 19, 08]

Cascade Microtech up 12% [Jun 13, 08]

Cascade Microtech (Beaverton, OR; $800K SBIR) unveiled two new Pyramid parametric probe cards that allow single-pass high performance DC and RF measurements and reduce the cost of parametric production test for semiconductors with advanced processes nodes at 65 nm, 45 nm and beyond [Erin McCarty, The Oregonian, Feb 8]

Catabasis Pharmaceuticals (Cambridge, MA )

Catabasis Pharmaceuticals (Cambridge, MA; no SBIR) raised some $1 million in a financing round, according to official documents. According to the company�s website, it�s working on a new class of drugs that treat inflammatory diseases. Catabasis� platform relies on small molecules that target the pathways related to the inflammatory response. [Mass High Tech, May 13]

Catelectric (Storrs, CT)

Six start-up technology firms have received grants as part of the state's small-business incubator program, ... administered by the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology ... $32,000 to $50,000 went to: AllerQuest LLC of West Hartford, Catelectric Corp. of Storrs, Hydrogen Safety of East Hartford, Quadra-Aerrow International of Glastonbury, Revegen Inc. of Farmington and the Center for Network Centric Product Support Research of East Hartford. [Hartford Courant, Dec 12, 08] no SBIR for any

Celadon

Peers Not Always Your Friend. Celadon won a GAO protest that NIH used evaluators with conflicts of interest and denied a Phase 1 award. Then, when NIH said that all the SBIR funds for the year had been used up, GAO recommended that NIH reimburse Celadon for all its costs, including the proposal preparation. What a sad evasion of responsibility by NIH. If the proposal was unfairly denied, NIH should have had it reviewed by a fair panel and award it if the panel rates it in the range of proposals accepted that year. There is no such thing as NIH is out of money. NIH is the USG which would have gained complete and unrestricted use of Celadon's technology if it had won the contract. The whole USG, not just NIH. At SDIO/BMDO in the few cases where a company could show me that it had not been evaluated fairly (usually because the evaluators didn't understand the proposal's argument(s)), I got a new evaluation and then, if I would have given them the award with the resulting new evaluation, I gave them the Phase 1 without regard to year of the money. Fairness first. I had plenty of money for the really good stuff and no regrets about rejected proposals at the margin of competitiveness. And all the agencies have the same plenty of money for the really good projects, and a boatload of marginal proposals from which they use up the mandated money.

Celator Pharmaceuticals (Princeton, NJ)

charities, increasingly frustrated with the slow emergence of new disease treatments, are pouring millions of dollars into pharmaceutical start-ups to bring new drugs to market. Starting with a $76 million partnership between Vertex Pharmaceuticals and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, the practice has become an important new source of capital for small drug companies. ... Last month, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, a blood-cancer charity, announced a $3.7 investment in closely held Celator Pharmaceuticals (Princeton, NJ; no SBIR) The charity will fund a midstage clinical trial on a drug to fight acute myeloid leukemia, a blood cancer that kills about 9,000 people a year in the U.S. ... All told, about a dozen disease-based charities recently have started funding early-stage drug research at start-up companies -- usually in exchange for royalties or stock options. Most of the charities say they were inspired by the success of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation [Keith Winstein, Wall Street Journal, Feb 10, 09]

CellCyte Genetics

CellCyte Genetics, whose market value briefly put it among the region's biggest biotech firms last year, has shut down � and hasn't been able to pay rent on its Bothell headquarters. [Seattle Times, Dec 24, 08]

The SEC has upgraded its probe of CellCyte to a formal investigation ... The Seattle Times reported in December that the stock was being promoted by a wave of brochures and unsolicited faxes paid for by a major company shareholder who has been sanctioned by regulatory authorities in Canada. [Seattle Times, May 16, 08]

CellCyte Genetics, briefly one of the Seattle area's most valuable biotechs by market capitalization, is running short of cash for its ongoing operations, according to regulatory documents filed Monday. [Angel Gonzalez, Seattle Times, Apr 15, 08]

The SEC initiated an inquiry into CellCyte Genetics, the Bothell biotech whose stock has fallen 93% since December, according to a letter written by a lawyer representing the company. ... German securities regulators are also investigating recent stock-promotion efforts related to the company, The Seattle Times has learned. CellCyte's market value soared to $440 million last fall as it was hyped by anonymous faxes and colorful brochures paid for by third parties with links to a well-known British Columbia stock promoter. [Angel Gonzalez, Seattle Times, Apr 5]

a shareholder lawsuit against CellCyte Genetics, accusing the biotech company and its officers of artificially inflating its stock price and defrauding investors with misleading claims. The lawsuit seeks class-action status. The lead plaintiff is a San Diego-area stockholder who bought and sold several thousand CellCyte shares in the past three months, [Seattle Times, Jan 16]

Who Is He? fledgling biotechnology company CellCyte Genetics (no SBIR), whose market value soared to more than $400M last fall after being hyped by offshore shareholders, plunged 55% Monday and Tuesday in heavy selling. The sharp drop coincided with changes made on the company's Web site after The Seattle Times inquired late last week about the accuracy of statements in the biography of CellCyte chief executive and co-founder Gary Reys. [Angel Gonzales, Seattle Times, Jan 9]

Celldex Therapeutics

Celldex Therapeutics (no SBIR) said it has agreed to buy CuraGen in a transaction that values CuraGen at $94.5 million. [Boston Globe, May 29, 09]

AVANT Immunotherapeutics, announced that, pursuant to a previously announced shareholder vote, the company will change its name to Celldex Therapeutics effective October 1, 2008. [Boston Globe, Sep 30]

Cell Genesys (South San Francisco, CA)

Cell Genesys, a 20-year-old Bay Area biotechnology company that has yet to win its first drug approval, said that it is firing most of its employees and considering a sale or merger after canceling work on its lead product. ... halting a second late-stage clinical trial of its experimental therapy GVAX in prostate cancer because an independent committee of experts concluded it was unlikely to deliver positive results. .... among a long line of companies that have tried in vain to produce successful cancer immunotherapies, which are also called cancer vaccines. [San Francisco Chronicle, Oct 17, 08]

Cell Genesys (South San Francisco, CA; no SBIR) developer of an immune-system booster tested against prostate cancer, lost nearly three-fourths of its value in Nasdaq trading Wednesday after reporting that more people died on combination therapy that included the drug. [San Jose Mercury News, Aug 27]

Shares in Cell Genesys (South San Francisco, CA; no SBIR) shot up 20% [Feb 15, 08] after the company released a favorable analysis of its experimental prostate cancer vaccine GVAX. [SF Chronicle, Feb 16]

Cell Signaling Technology (Danvers, MA)

Cell Signaling Technology (Danvers, MA; $3M SBIR) announced the continuation of a research agreement with drug company Bristol-Myers Squibb for kinase inhibitor profiling. [Chris Reidy, Boston Globe, Feb 5]

Cell Therapeutics (Seattle, WA)

Cell Therapeutics said today that an institutional investor has purchased $20 million in shares and warrants. [Seattle Times, May 11, 09]

Cell Therapeutics said it has raised $15 million in cash from an investor. The company said the investor, who received shares of preferred stock, has the right to purchase an additional $5 million worth of preferred stock within 60 days. ..... Shares of Cell Therapeutics were down more than 19% trading to 31 cents a share. [Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle), Apr 13, 09]

Cell Therapeutics said it will lay off the 62 employees at its Italian research center and shutter the facility. [Seattle Times, Feb 28, 09]

Cell Therapeutics has partnered with a California pharmaceutical company to sell its only commercial drug, Zevalin. The Seattle-based biotech and Spectrum Pharmaceuticals of Irvine will split the costs and the profits, the companies said Wednesday. Spectrum will pay Cell Therapeutics $15 million in the near term, and up to $15 million in milestone payments upon hitting certain sales targets. [Angel Gonzalez, Seattle Times, Nov 27, 08]

Cell Therapeutics (Seattle, WA; one SBIR) said its net quarterly loss decreased to $46 million from $48 million in the same period last year.... revenues had risen to $2.6 million from $20,000, mainly due to sales of Zevalin, a radio-immunotherapy to treat cancer. Operating expenses were down to $20 million from $49 million in the same period last year. ... it will need to raise additional financing this year and is exploring alternatives to do so. [Seattle Times, Nov 8, 08]

Cell Therapeutics said it will need to raise money soon because its available cash won't last beyond September. [Seattle Times, Aug 19, 08]

Cell Therapeutics said in a regulatory filing that without a capital infusion "we will have insufficient funds to continue operations through the end of the current fiscal quarter." [Seattle Times, Jul 21, 08] After $800M invested over 16 years, including one SBIR after $70M and its IPO. Stock price down 99.7% from its Y2K high.

In a bid to once again become a biotech company with marketed products, Cell Therapeutics said it completed its purchase of U.S. rights to the cancer drug Zevalin for $10M. ... Cell Therapeutics has had no commercial products since it sold off Trisenox in 2005. [Angel Gonzalez, Seattle Times, Dec 28, 07]

Cell Therapeutics (Seattle, WA; one SBIR) up 10% as it announced it would file an application to sell its cancer-fighting therapy Xyotax in the European Union ahead of schedule. [Seattle Times, Dec 19, 07]

Finger Pointing Back. The government now contends that a whistle-blower within Cell Therapeutics (Seattle WA; one SBIR) was the mastermind of a much bigger scheme than the ones on which he reported. ... In April, the company agreed to pay $10.5 million to the government to settle the charges. ... But the Justice Department has had a change of heart about Mr. Marchese and is asking a federal judge to award him nothing. [Barry Meier, New York Times, Oct 25, 07]

Cell Therapeutics (Seattle, WA; one SBIR) agreed to acquire cancer-therapy developer Systems Medicine (Tucson, AZ; no SBIR) for $20M in stock. ... Earlier this year, Miami-based Dor BioPharma rebuffed an unsolicited bid from Cell Therapeutics ... Cell Therapeutics, which hasn't turned a profit since it was founded in 1991, doesn't have any drugs on the market. It sold off Trisenox, a leukemia treatment, in 2005. Its flagship drug, Xyotax, has failed several major trials, but the company still hopes to get it on the market. [Angel Gonzalez, Seattle Times, Jul 26]

Cell Therapeutics executives will do a whirlwind tour of Milan where tits research is based in the suburb of Bresso since it acquired local biotech Novuspharma in 2003. ... Italian-speaking shareholders can check the company's Web site in Dante's language. [Seattle Times, Jul 3, 07]

Cell Therapeutics (Seattle, WA; one SBIR) wooed physicians with expensive dinners, cocktail parties at resort facilities and payments of up to $1,500 to get them to prescribe its cancer drug for unapproved uses, according to a lawsuit unsealed yesterday by the U.S. Attorney's Office. The company, without admitting any wrongdoing, has agreed to pay $10.5M to settle the government's claims.[Seattle Times, Apr 18]

CellTraffix (Pittsford, NY)

CellTraffix (Pittsford, NY, no SBIR) is commercializing a technology by Michael King, a chemical engineer at the University of Rochester who's developing the cell-capture devices wherein bioengineers have developed an implantable device that captures very pure samples of stem cells circulating in the blood. The device, a length of plastic tubing coated with proteins, could lead to better bone-marrow transplants and stem-cell therapies, and it also shows promise as a way to capture and reprogram cancer cells roaming the bloodstream. [Katherine Bourzac, MIT Tech Review, Feb 13]

Cellular Bioengineering

Grab Your Politician for Plus-Up. Smaller and more transparent earmarks of federal funds for favored domestic projects are returning after a one-year moratorium on the controversial practice. ... a bit less than 1% of total R&D appropriations (3% for DOD) ... The Senate Top 10, are mostly smaller states with senators in key committee chairmanships�Mississippi, New Mexico and Tennessee are at the top. ... search AAAS's new database of 2008 earmarks [AAAS Newsletter, Sep 07] But for small business, even 1% is a big honey pot. In the list (August version): Electro Energy (CT; SBIR), Ocean Power Technologies (OR, SBIR in NJ), DBS Energy CT, Eikos (MA; $8M+ SBIR), Cellular Bioengineering HI, Cerematec (UT; SBIR), Ramgen WA, Advanced Radar Technologies WY, Compact Membrane Systems (DE; $20M SBIR), SD Catalyst Group SD. Your story is that high-tech small business will create jobs, and they don't know whether your claim is valid or just wishful thinking. Like the federal mission agencies who then have to award and supervise the contract, they don't seem much to care.

Cellular Dynamics International (Madison, WI)

Thump, thump. Thump, thump Heart muscle cells in a cluster beat with the same rhythm as a human heart. Scientists at Cellular Dynamics International (Madison, WI; at least $1M SBIR) company aiming to put itself at the center of a new industry, grew the cells from human tissue. Scientists engineered the tissue cells to be pluripotent, which means they could turn into the beating heart cells under the microscope, or liver cells or any other cells in the human body. These cells, the scientists said, are just the beginning of the coming revolution in medicine. [Kathleen Gallagher, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Nov 29, 08] ... co-founded by stem cell pioneer and University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher James Thomson, has absorbed a pair of sister companies and raised $18 million in financing, the firm said. [Business Journal of Milwaukee, Nov 24, 08]

CellzDirect (Pittsboro, NC)

CellzDirect, (Pittsboro, NC; no SBIR) a biotechnology company, has agreed to be bought for $57M cash by [Invitrogen (Carlsbad, CA; $4M SBIR), 4,700 worldwide employees with annual revenue over $1B] that supplies nearly every drug research laboratory worldwide. [Sabine Vollmer, Raleigh News&Observer, Jan 12]

Celunol

Diversa (San Diego, CA) and Celunol (Cambridge, MA, aka BC International; 3 SBIRs) completed their merger to form Verenium. [Mass High-Tech, Jun 21]

Cempra Pharmaceuticals (Chapel Hill, NC)

Cempra Pharmaceuticals, (Chapel Hill, NC; no SBIR) tiny company developing new antibiotics, has raised $46 million in venture capital financing. It's one of the largest venture hauls by a Triangle company in the past year. [Alan Wolf, Raleigh News &Observer, May 14, 09]

Cempra Pharmaceuticals (Chapel Hill, NC; no SBIR) raised [another] $10M in new financing, ... previously raised $22M VC. [Raleigh News&Observer, Jan 11, 08] founded in January 2006 to develop medicines to meet the increasing need for treating drug-resistant bacterial infections in the community and hospital. .. focused on capturing near-term value from market opportunities in anti-infectives [company website]

Centice

Centice (Morrisville, NC; $3.5M SBIR), a startup that has developed a tabletop device to detect prescription drug errors, has received another $4 million to bolster sales to retail pharmacies. Existing investors provided the cash, bringing the total amount raised to $20 million since 2004. [Sabine Vollmer, Raleigh News & Observer, Apr 7, 09]

Centice (Morrisville NC; one SBIR) is within one year of marketing its first major product, company officials said, after raising $11.3M in private financing [Raleigh News&Observer, Nov 16]

Three Triangle technology firms raised $10.5M last month to hire workers, invest in research and market new products Medical-implants maker Sicel Technologies raised $7M; Biotech startup Entegrion raised $2M (first VC); Centice Corp. raised $1.5M. [Raleigh News and Observer, Nov 10] Sicel and Centice have had SBIRs.

Centrose (Madison, WI)

Centrose LLC (Madison, WI; $800K federal with some SBIR) raised $2.1 million of funding from undisclosed, out-of-state angel investors .... to use its sugar chemistry to improve existing drugs ... hopes to have the drug, which it says is very potent against non-small cell lung cancer, ready for clinical trials in humans within two years, he said. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Feb 11, 09]

A revolutionary drug development engine that enhances drugs by specifically adding novel sugars will now benefit from [another] $150K. Centrose (Madison WI; maybe SBIR) and the University of Wisconsin received notice that the NSF will fund a joint effort aimed at optimizing a proprietary drug discovery method. Specifically, Centrose will use the funds to expand the sugar chemistry while the University will use their share to optimize the biochemistry behind the sugar attachment process. ... Earlier this year, Centrose exclusively licensed a set of drug enhancement technologies from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) that use sugars to lower toxic effects and increase drug potency. Since then, the Company has raised over $1 M in private funding and received another $500K in federal funding [company press release, Nov 20]

Three Madison technology companies have been qualified to receive investor tax credits under the state's angel investor and venture fund tax credit programs. The companies are: Windlift LLC, which is developing a wind-powered pump that has a patent pending; Centrose LLC, which is trying to use sugar chemistry to make a variety of existing and failed drugs less toxic and more effective; and Symbiont Web Inc., which is developing software to create a relationship between network, Web and mobile space to promote faster data flows and more stable Internet connections. The tax credit program provides a dollar-for-dollar reduction for state income taxes owed to investors in qualified companies. [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Nov 3, 07] No SBIR for the firms.

Centrose (Madison WI; no SBIR) wants to raise $3M ,the biotech start-up has already gotten commitments for $875,000 ... headed by James Prudent, who was previously chief scientific officer and a board member at EraGen Biosciences in Madison. The company has exclusive rights to 12 patents from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation for what it says is a proprietary technology that uses sugar molecules to make drugs less toxic and more effective. [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Sep 21]

Sweet Hope. Centrose LLC (Madison, WI) is hoping to build a drug discovery franchise that leverages its chemistry expertise and its proprietary technology that uses sugar molecules to make drugs less toxic and more effective. It has exclusive rights to 12 patents from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and is getting a $200K SBIR NIH grant. [Kathleen Gallagher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 23]

Cephalon (Fraser, PA)

Cephalon (Fraser, PA; $500K SBIR) said it signed an option agreement to acquire Ception Therapeutics (Malvern, PA; no SBIR), which is developing a drug to treat esophagus inflammation in children and asthma in adults. ... will pay Ception a $100 million upfront option payment and another $250 million if it exercises its option to purchase all of the company�s outstanding stock. ... Ception is conducting late-stage testing of it lead product, Reslizumab, as a treatment of pediatric eosinophilic esophagitis and midstage testing of the same drug as a treatment of eosinophilic asthma in adults. [Philadelphia Business Journal, Jan 14, 09]

Alkermes said that it has regained from Cephalon full commercialization rights to Vivitrol, once-monthly, extended-release injectable medication for the treatment of alcohol dependence. [Boston Globe, Dec 1, 08]

Cephalon (Fraser, PA, $0.5M SBIR) and its wholly owned subsidiary Cima Labs Inc. filed a patent infringement lawsuit Tuesday against Watson Laboratories , which wants to make a generic version of Cephalon's Fentora drug for cancer pain. [Philadelphia Business Journal, Jun 3, 08]

Cepheid (Sunnyvale, CA)

Cepheid up 22% [Apr 24, 09]

Cepheid up 17% [Mar 23, 09]

Cepheid down 16% [Mar 2, 09]

Cepheid down 11% [Jan 20, 09]

Cepheid down 16% [Jan 13, 09] posted fourth-quarter revenue short of analysts' expectations and cut its full-year revenue forecast on slowing customer demand. [Wall Street Journal, Jan 14]

Cepheid down 14% [Dec 1, 08] On a stock bloodbath day

Cepheid up 13% [Nov 24, 08]

Cepheid up 11% [Nov 13, 08]

Cepheid up 17% [Nov 4, 08]

Cepheid up 10% [Nov 3, 08]

Cepheid down 10% [Oct 15, 08]

Cepheid up 22% [Oct 13, 08]

Cepheid down 35% after the company reported a widened second quarter loss. [San Jose Mercury, Jul 25, 08]

Cepheid up 12% [Mar 3, 08]

Cepheid up 10% [Jan 10, 08]

Cepheid up 11% [Dec 5, 07]

Cepheid up 10% [Oct 30, 07]

Cepheid (Sunnyvale, CA; $3M SBIR) first made its name with anthrax-detection tests to guard the nation's post offices from bioterrorism attacks back in 2001. Now, [its] gene-based testing system is becoming part of an escalating nationwide defense against the deadly "superbug" called MRSA, which is often innocently spread by well-meaning health care workers. Cepheid won FDA approval in April for its test for a life-threatening, antibiotic-resistant form of the common staph bacterium, a strain that now kills more people in the United States each year than the AIDS virus. [Bernadette Tansey, San Francisco Chronicle, Oct 28]

Ception Therapeutics (Malvern, PA)

Ceradyne

Ceradyne down 16% [Feb 10, 09]

Ceradyne down 22% [Dec 19, 08]

Ceradyne up 11% [Dec 16, 08]

Ceradyne down 12% [Dec 1, 08] On a stock bloodbath day

Ceradyne down 11% [Nov 14, 08]

Ceradyne up 18% [Nov 13, 08]

Ceradyne down 26% [Oct 28, 08] as its third-quarter net income decreased 41% on charges and losses from auction-rate securities. The armor maker further cut its 2008 earnings and revenue outlooks. [WSJ, Oct 29]

Ceradyne up 10% [Oct 16, 08]

Ceradyne down 13% [Oct 15, 08]

Ceradyne up 10% [Oct 13, 08]

Ceradyne up 13% [Sep 18, 08]

SemEquip (Billerica, MA; no SBIR) has been acquired by Ceradyne (Costa Mesa, CA; $4M SBIR) for about $25 M cash. [Mass High Tech, Jul 9]

One Wall Street (Hough) wag finds contrarian value in Ceradyne which he says is down 60% over the past six months and has a forward PE ration of only 6 with good growth prospects.

After Ceradyne cut its 2008 outlook for revenue and earnings and 11% of its workforce, the market cut its stock price 24% [Feb 26, 08] On the bright side, Ceradyne is expanding its solar business and plans to add 200,000 square feet of manufacturing capacity near its existing plant in China. The company sees shipments of its ceramic crucibles, which are used to melt silicon for use in solar panels, increasing. [David Bogoslaw, Business Week, Feb 26]

Ceradyne is Forbes's third fastest growing high tech company with a 75% compounded sales growth rate for three years, thanks to IEDs in Iraq.

Jack Hough touts Ceradyne as a capital efficient company with low PE ratio and high sales growth. [Wall Street Journal, Jan 10] What Hough didn't say was that Ceradyne was a great beneficiary of IEDs and Army demand for the best cost-irrelevant defense - NOW. Not a repeatable market.

Ceradyne up 10% [AP, Nov 28, 07] after the company said it will receive additional funding to produce bulletproof vests, and is likely to receive a $400 million body armor contract.

Ceradyne got $436M in government contracts in 2006, says fedspending.org's database. Physical Optics $21M.

Forbes's annual list of the best 200 small companies had several SBIR awardees: Ceradyne #12, Flir Systems 37, II-IV 58, ATMI 69, ViaSat 90, Surmodics 105, Micrel 149, OPNET Tech 167.

War Was Great for Business. Ceradyne lost 6% and at least one broker said that demand for body armor will fall as the US shrinks the number of US military bodies in Iraq. [Jan 07]

Armored Profits. The market loved the war business at Ceradyne which reported nearly tripled profits. Stock up 14% [Nov 1, 06]

Motley Fool notes that bulls outnumber bears 191-3 for Ceradyne in what it admits is an unscientific survey. Contrarian note: If everybody is bullish, few must be buying. [Oct 06]

Ceradyne has been winning contracts as a result of the government's strong demand for the firm's ceramic body armor. Higher revenue combined with Ceradyne's relatively efficient manufacturing has allowed for significant profit margin improvement [Reuter's, Sep 11]

Ceradyne got a five-year open end contract for potentially $600+M to supply armor shields for Army vehicles as the Army finds there is no good substitute for a shield, even though it adds a lot of weight, in an ambush world. Here is one great ROI story for SBIR where tons of profits flowed from four Phase 2 SBIRs. Unfortunately, it would not have happened without a war of nasty surprises. But one formula for business success is to be in position to exploit a sudden market opening.

Among Business Week's 100 hot growth companies were Ceradyne and II-VI. [Jun06]

Ceradyne has been in a strong uptrend since the summer, and this rally has taken its shares from $20 to its current price of about $47. More recently, though, the stock dropped amid an offering of more shares. Despite the recent fall, CRDN continues to appear to be a solid company. Its superior profit margins helped it land recently on the Reuters Select Quality-category screen for Strong Operating Margins. [Reuters, Dec 8, 05]

War Profits Someone. Reuters also likes Ceradyne which has posted impressive Operating Profit Margins for the last five-year ... Over the last five years, the company's revenue expanded at an average annual rate of 47.98%, easily outpacing the Industry's 8.63% .. Demand for the company's body armor has also remained strong, and the company has worked to meet that demand. As a result, its market share has climbed significantly. The US government continues to spend in this area, [Mar 05]

Ceradyne took a 9% hit after it announced the opening of a new armor plant (in DOD-speak: vehicle armor design and armored vehicle prototype facility).

Ceradyne jumped 18% on news that it got a $461M Army contract for ceramic body armor. With the press's continual harping on lack of armor for bodies and Humvees in Iraq, the Army is moving as fast as its bureaucratic legs allow to buy more, more, more. Especially to have a decent story by the fall election. Earlier this year Ceradyne said it was buying Germany's ESK Ceramics for $136M. The success grows it right out of future SBIR competition. Unfortunately, war is good for business as long as the war in some other country.

Armored Jeeps. Ceradyne got some useful press [R Cheng, Wall Street Journal, Mar 17] for its attempts to sell the Army even more armor for Humvees beyond the hard seats. Perhaps the handful of Phase 2 SBIRs will help Ceradyne take on the gorilla in the armor business - Armor Holdings. On the SBIR scale Ceradyne is a publicly-traded giant at 430 employees and which was already big when it got its first SBIR in 1998. Maybe Irvine Sensors a few blocks away could learn a few lessons on making a profit and having SBIR.

Ceramatec (Salt Lake, UT)

Ceramitron (St. Louis, MO)

A one-man St. Louis startup called Ceramitron LLC has landed a $99,000 [SBIR] contract with NASA to build a miniature sensor for weather balloons, land rovers and submarines. ... drastically reducing the size, weight and cost of a mass spectrometer � normally a laboratory instrument � to a disposable device the size of a tennis ball,� he said. [St Louis Business Journal, Dec 1, 08]

Ceregene (San Diego, CA)

An experimental therapy for Parkinson's disease being developed by Ceregene (San Diego, CA; $1M SBIR) failed to show effectiveness in an important clinical trial, the company said yesterday. [San Diego Union Tribune, Nov 27, 08]

Cermet (Atlanta, GA)

BMDO SBIR company Cermet (Atlanta, GA) says it has got Wafer Technology,UK. to market Cermet's bulk semiconductor substrates (including ZnO, GaN and AlN) to key customers in Europe. Cermet president Jeff Nause said Cermet is very pleased ... Cermet's products include ZnO substrates for blue LEDs, blue laser diodes, and high frequency microwave devices. Interestingly, Cermet's advisory board includes Dr. Ian Ferguson, Director of Research for EMCORE, another BMDO SBIR winner although BMDO does not claim much of EMCORE's public market success. Some of Cermet's story can be read in last spring's Atlanta Business Chronicle.

A Bright Blue Laser Company (Dec 16). Cermet (Atlanta, GA) got a BMDO Phase 2 STTR to develop GaN crystals that could eventually make digital video disc (DVD) more affordable and commercially viable. ... The company is also developing crystals for a number of corporate clients, who asked not to be identified. ... The company is focused on a patent-pending process of growing crystals synthesizing gallium nitride (GaN) powder which in turn is used to grow high-purity single crystals of GaN from a liquid. The idea came from president Jeff Nause in 1993 while still a Georgia Tech student. Nause hopes to begin selling the crystals within six months. .. Potential customers include Hewlett-Packard which would develop the laser to sell to Sony or Hitachi. SDL, Xerox, CREE Research, Northrop Grumman, and Dow Chemical have also showed interest This puts Cermet at the beginning of the DVD development chain, and it is one of the few companies to be doing such sophisticated crystal research and development outside of Boston or California. It has seven employees, three Tech graduates and four co-op students. Cermet (cermetinc@juno.com) was incorporated by a Tech professor in 1991, but began focusing on crystal growth when Nause joined the company in 1995. Nause hopes to add between four and eight employees next year to do research and marketing. The basic skull melting process had a BMDO Phase 1 in 1994 for a different nitride. [facts from Evelina Shmukler, Atlanta Business Journal, Dec 14, and the public SBIR databases] Why BMDO? Why not? Who else takes chances on new technology in a one-man company with no PhD? And who else would reject a go-nowhere Phase 2 proposal for over-fantasizing about commercialization and battle GAO to preserve the idea that SBIR without aggressive after-market action is a waste of taxpayer's money?

Cerus

Cerus up 17% [Oct 20, 08]

Cerus up 17% [Oct 17, 08]

Cerus down 26% [Oct 10, 08]

Cerus down 10% [Oct 6, 08]

Cerus up 14% [Sep 18, 08]

Cerus down 10% [Jul 29, 08]

Cerus down 12% [May 2, 08]

Cerus up 11% [Apr 1, 08]

Cerus up 11% [Mar 26, 08]

Chapman Innovations (Salt Lake City, UT)

Chapman Innovations (Salt Lake City, UT; no SBIR) has developed a heat- and fire-resistant fabric, CarbonX, that will be featured tonight on the Discovery Channel's "Smash Lab" show. The program examines new technologies in experimental applications. The fabric was developed by company founder Mike Chapman, who previously worked in motorsports and wanted to create a fabric that would protect race-car drivers from fire-related injuries. The result was a fabric made of oxidized polyacrylonitrile, a nonconductive carbon-based material and a strengthening fiber. The company says the product can withstand temperatures of more than 3,000 degrees. [Brianna Lange, Salt Lake Tribune, Feb 19]

ChaCha

Most folks in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel know Scott Jones as "the guy who invented voicemail." In the early '90s Jones made about $50 M on his company, which created the predominate form of voicemail, and he "retired" at age 31. Over the past two decades this driven inventor has been generating ideas for new products and companies - some were successful, others hit the scrap heap - at a pace that would make Thomas Edison's head spin.
Jones's latest company, ChaCha, is developing a potential rival to Google - a search engine assisted by human experts who will help you find your answer. [CNNmoney.com, Nov 5]

Charles River Lab

Charles River Lab down 21% [Nov 6, 08] after the life sciences company slashed its earnings forecast. [Boston Globe]

Charles River Lab down 18% [Oct 23, 08]

Chemat

Chemat Technology Named a Top Ten Nano-Firm Considered survivors of government-funded research and development, Chemat became a profitable business in 2000 (half of that attributed to customer sales), a decade since the sol-gel solution company was founded. Prior to that, Chemat's R&D Division was successful in completing nearly one hundred contracts for government agencies and industry clients. Its mission is the creation and commercialization of sol-gel based advanced materials and technologies, for its own use and to provide its clients with technologies they can use to create leading-edge products using advanced materials. [LARTA, Jul 16]

Chemir Analytical Services

Star Entrepreneur. For the ninth year in a row, Chemir Analytical Services has been awarded recognition for rapid growth and contributions to the greater St. Louis area. [company website] This year it was chosen by Ernst & Young as �entrepreneur of the year� in technology for the central Midwest. [St Louis Post Dispatch] CEO Shri Thanedar started as an 18-year-old Bachelor�s chemist in India, and has grown the firm to $24M/yr in revenues. No SBIR.

Chesapeake Sciences (Millersville, MD

Defense contractor L-3 Communications is acquiring Chesapeake Sciences (Millersville, MD; $6.5M SBIR) for a yet-to-be disclosed sum. ... CSC had 20 contracts with DOD in 2006 worth $45.5 million [Baltimore Business Journal, Nov 26, 08]

Chlorogen (Creve Coeur, MO)

Chlorogen (Creve Coeur, MO, one Phase 1 SBIR), once one of the region's most promising plant science startups, has ceased research operations and is selling off its technology ... sold to Dow AgroSciences LLC exclusive rights to its biotech crop technology for use in developing animal vaccines. [Rachel Melcer, St Louis Post Dispatch, Sep 11]

Chimerix (Durham, NC)

Chimerix (Durham, NC; $600K SBIR) has joined the Medicines for Malaria Venture and its public-private partnerships to come up with malaria treatments that work and are affordable in developing countries. Under the partnership with MMV, the company will open its chemical library. The company has also agreed to develop any potential drugs that show promise as malaria treatments with the help of iThemba Pharmaceuticals, a company in South Africa. Founded in 2002, Chimerix is working on oral treatments for smallpox, HIV/AIDS and cytomegalovirus, a virus common in organ-transplant recipients. [Raleigh News & Observer, Apr 2, 09]

Chorum Technologies

Chorum Technologies announced a wide passband multiplexer capable of handling 40 Gbps at a broad 100 GHz spacing, thus filtering many fewer lambdas than is possible using the company�s current line of commercial multiplexers.Chorum has had one Phase 2 from DARPA and one from BMDO. NP Photonic has had 10 Phase 1s and two Phase 2s since 1998, all but one Phase 1 from BMDO. BMDO loves lively photonics entrepreneurs.

The Occasional IPO
Although the IPO market has taken a dive faster than you can say falling NASDAQ, and although the government doesn't back many such firms anyway with its SBIR, one has filed for IPO. Chorum Technologies , first known to the government as Macro-Vision Communications hopes to raise $140M on the basis of its first $3M sales last quarter and its prospects in various optical hardware - Mux & Demux, routers, switchers, and processors. Founder and CTO Jian-Yu Liu who founded the company in 1997, and went straight to the SBIR well, right after his PhD from U Colorado, still owns about 10%. Macro-Vis had two SBIRs from DARPA and BMDO for $2.3M ($1.9M from BMDO which gives bigger than normal money for bigger than normal market prospects).

Ciena (Landover, MD)

Ciena Bought for $7B (Jun 4) Ciena, the startup that didn't need SBIR, was bought for $7B. The highest market cap for companies for whom SBIR was a big help is fluctuating around $300M. That's ATMI whose cap has plummeted from $600M a few months ago. Also Cree Research just under $200M.

Ciencia (East Hartford, CT)

Jeff Bond tells me that Sal Fernandez died; Sal founded Ciencia (East Hartford CT). Nov 06

Why Pay $100K (Mar 19) Why pay $100K for a fluorescence lifetime sensor when Oriel Instruments will sell you the best for $18K? Oriel is displaying its new instrument at Pittcon '97, the annual conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy. (Anyone remember mechanical chemical balances and splashed nitric acid in wet analytical chemistry?) The instrument's heart comes from Ciencia (East Hartford, CT) who developed it with two SBIR awards from BMDO (one while the crew was still at Scientific Research Associates, a huge SBIR user with little commercialization to show for it). The instrument's proximate source is an ONR SBIR. I used to say in public that when you had finished a BMDO Phase 2, you were ready for a Navy Phase 1. Question for the anti-immigration ideologues: would Ciencia and Oriel have this advance on the market if Ciencia's founder-president Sal Fernandez had not been allowed to enter from Cuba?Return to Index

Cilion

ethanol company Cilion raising the largest venture round ever -- $200 million -- for an alternative energy company [VentureBeat.com, Sep 1]

Clark-MXR (Ann Armor, MI)

Photonics Spectra Jan 2000 says Clark-MXR (Ann Arbor, MI) makes the mode-locked erbium-doped fiber ring laser that produces the femto-second pulses for Lucent's demonstration of zillion wavelengths on one fiber. Don't look for it yet in stores because it hasn't yet showed the commercial requirements for lifetime, temperature and vibration insensitivity. Clark-MXR is a combo of Clark Instruments (Rochester, NY) and start-up MXR that got going with a BMDO SBIR that the experts panned in reviewing the Phase 1 proposal.

Clean Diesel Technologies (Stamford, CT)

Clean Diesel Technologies (no SBIR). has taken its emissions technology to the water, landing as a client Burlington, Vermont-based ferry company Lake Champlain Transportation Co. [Mass High Tech, Feb 14,08]

Clean Diesel Technologies (Stamford, CT; 13 employees, no SBIR) may become a big player in emissions control. The tiny outfit, specializing in cutting nitrogen oxide and particles in the exhaust from diesel cars and trucks, has licensed its technology to two makers of emission-control products, Tenneco and Germany's Robert Bosch. [Gene Marcial, Business Week, Dec 3, 07]

Cleveland BioLabs

Cleveland BioLabs up 11% [May 29, 09]

Cleveland BioLabs up 11% [May 18, 09]

Cleveland BioLab up 13% [May 4, 09]

Cleveland BioLabs stock, which shot up to 6 a year ago only to crash to 1.32 this Mar. 6, is again on the rise, bouncing to 3.20. Why? BioLabs "expects to receive a purchase contract this year from the Health & Human Services Dept. for a protective agent against radiation damage," says Stephen Brozak of WBB Securities, who rates the stock a strong buy, with a 12-month target of 13. He says an HHS contract could be worth several hundred million dollars. BioLabs has teamed up with the Cleveland Clinic, the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute, and Roswell Park Cancer Institute to develop the radiation treatment. [Business Week, May 11, 09]

Cleveland BioLabs up 12% [Apr 21, 09]

Cleveland BioLabs down 16% [Feb 17, 09]

Cleveland BioLabs down 11% [Feb 10, 09]

Cleveland BioLabs has begun its initial safety studies, the first step in the clinical trial process before applying for FDA approval for its radiation treatment drug. ... received two federal contracts totaling $22.2 million to develop the drug [Business First of Buffalo, Oct 15, 08]

Cleveland BioLabs down 13% [Oct 7, 08]

Cleveland BioLabs down 11% [Oct 6, 08]

Cleveland BioLabs down 11% [Sep 18, 08]

A new $13.3 million federal grant is helping push Cleveland BioLabs one step closer to FDA approval for its drug to treat the gastrointenstinal effects of acute radiation syndrome. [First Business of Buffalo, Sep 16, 08]

Cleveland BioLabs received approval for the first of 20 patents sought for Protectan CBLB502, a compound used in a drug to treat acute radiation syndrome. [Business First of Buffalo, Jul 8, 08]

Cleveland BioLabs up 23% [Apr 14, 08]

Cleveland BioLabs up 17% [Apr 11, 08]

Cleveland BioLabs up 12% [Mar 3, 08]

Cleveland BioLabs up 20% [Jan 25, 08]

Cleveland BioLabs up 13% [Jan 24, 08]

Cleveland BioLabs up 10% [Jan 23, 08]

Cleveland BioLabs down 59% [Jan 4, 08] as DOD picks Osiris, up 10%, for $225M contract for stem cell therapy.

Cleveland BioLabs down 12% [Dec 11, 07]

CleverSet

The Exit. Art Technology Group (Cambridge, MA; no SBIR) plans to acquire CleverSet (Seattle, WA; $1.5M SBIR) for $10M [Boston Business Journal, Jan 22, 08] CleverSet, the leading provider of personalized recommendations for eCommerce companies, was named the winner in the "Most Innovative Company" category in the 2007 American Business Awards [eMedia Wire, Jun 12, 07] in Oct 07 in the Web 2.0 Summit Launch Pad competition, named "Best in Show" and "Most Likely to Exit First." ... its MDA SBIR promised to develop representations and algorithms for distributed inference and control over a network of heterogeneous sensors and weapons connected by a communication network. The approach will be evaluated within CleverSet Modeler, CleverSet's relational Bayesian modeling environment using CleverSet's patent-pending synthetic variable language.

Cobalt Biofuels (Mountain View, CA)

Cobalt Biofuels a startup based in Mountain View, CA, has developed a cheap way to make butanol from biomass. Last week, the company announced that it had raised $25 million to expand from a small laboratory-scale production to a pilot-scale plant that can produce about 35,000 gallons of fuel per year. [MIT Tech Review, Oct 27, 08]

Cocrystal Discovery (Seattle, WA)

Cocrystal Discovery (Seattle, WA: no SBIR) said it�s raised $10 million to help it develop new anti-viral drugs..... its focus is on the discovery and development of anti-viral compounds that target replication enzymes and will target hepatitis and influenza diseases. [Puget Sound Business Journal, Sep 19]

Codon Devices (Cambridge, MA

Another once-promising life sciences company has died. Codon Devices (Cambridge, MA; no SBIR), a five-year-old biotech working on ways to synthesize DNA and other genetic material, is quietly shutting down. ... after they failed to raise additional money .... Codon's failure is especially notable because it attracted so many big-name investors ..... In total, the company raised at least $31 million. Its founders included some star researchers [Todd Wallack, Boston Globe, Apr 3, 09]

Cognex

Cognex (no SBIR) up 19%, the maker of machine vision sensors that inspect factory product lines, posted third-quarter earnings that beat analysts' estimates.

Cognitive Code

A new company called Cognitive Code has built software that it believes will let everyday gadgets talk with humans. At the Techcrunch40 conference in San Francisco on Monday, the startup unveiled a developer's studio with a set of algorithms that convert strings of words into concepts and formulate a wordy response. [Kate Greene, MIT Tech Review, Sep 19]

Cohesive Technologies (Franklin, MA)

Thermo Fisher Scientific bought Cohesive Technologies (Franklin, MA) to boost its line of analysis products for science-related markets such as the pharmaceutical industry. One Phase 1 SBIR long ago.

ColdWatt (Austin, TX)

ColdWatt (Austin, TX) was created by a venture investment firm that struck an agreement with Rockwell Scientific to acquire some of its pioneering research on more efficient power supplies developed in a contract Rockwell had with the U.S. Navy. ... raised $31.5M in two rounds of venture capital. ...$6M in sales before its product is officially launched [Austin American-Statesman, Feb 26] It makes more efficient power supplies for servers.

Collagenex Pharmaceuticals

Galderma Laboratories, an affiliate of Suisse Galderma Pharma, acquired Collagenex Pharmaceuticals for $420M, 30% over its previous stock price. [Feb 26, 08]

Collegium Pharmaceutical (Cumberland, RI)

Collegium Pharmaceutical (Cumberland, RI; no SBIR) reports that it has closed a $20 million Series D round of financing. ... founded in 2002, specializes in the development of proprietary, late-stage pharmaceutical products [Mass High Tech, Jul 15,08]

CoLucid Pharmaceuticals (Indianapolis, IN)

CoLucid Pharmaceuticals (Indianapolis, IN; no SBIR) raised another $25 M in venture funding to help it develop a new migraine drug it licensed two years ago from Eli Lilly ... Series B financing that included all of its original venture firms -- a move that shows its backers believe the company is on the right track. [Indianapolis Star, Jul 1, 08]

CombiMatrix

CombiMatrix down 15% [Mar 5, 09]

Combimatrix up 18% [Nov 28, 08]

Combimatrix up 20% [Oct 13, 08]

Combimatrix down 13% [Oct 9, 08]

Combimatrix down 27% [Oct 8, 08]

Combimatrix down 11% [Oct 6, 08]

CombiMatrix down 12% [Mar 10, 08]

CombiMatrix up 11% [Feb 13, 08] after winning $31M jury award.

Dirty bomb sniffer also from CombiMatrix, a winner of one Phase 2 SBIR in 2000 and a new $10M DOD contract (says Business Week, Mar 21, 05) for a computer chip product that sniffs 20 different threats (non-political). Delivery to the field by year's end (in the best of scenarios).

CombinatoRx (Cambridge, MA)

CombinatoRx (Cambridge, MA; no SBIR) said it plans to layoff another 30 employees, just weeks after it said it was cutting 52 jobs. CombinatoRx said the combined cuts, amounting to 65 percent of its workforce, should enable the company to continue to operate for at least four more years without raising additional cash. [Boston Globe, Nov 20, 08]

Comfort Motion Technologies (Anderson,IN)

Comfort Motion Technologies (Anderson,IN; no SBIR), a software research and design company, said it has received a $1.085 million grant from the Indiana 21st Century Research and Technology Fund to develop software aimed at improving driver safety and comfort. [Indianapolis Star, Jan 17]

Commonwealth Biotechnologies

Commonwealth Biotechnologies up 31% [Apr 2, 08] after its unit Exelgen said it signed two drug discovery contracts with major pharmaceutical companies. [AP]

Compact Membrane Systems

Compellent Technologies (Eden Prairie, MN)

Who Needs Profits? An unprofitable network-storage company led a trio of initial public offerings of stock, with Compellent Technologies [Eden Prairie, MN; no SBIR] rising 79% on its first day. [Wall Street Journal, Oct 11]

Computational Fluid Dynamics Research (Huntsville, AL)

CFD Research Growing A Growing Company Computational Fluid Dynamics Research (Huntsville, AL), a private graphic-simulation-technology business (with a decent website), is adding 25 employees by the end of the year and occupying 28,000 sqft of office space, says The Huntsville Times. An SBIR success story? Depends on your criteria. CFD has burned at least $12M of SBIR on projects that sound like what every university has dozens of professors doing, such as A UNIFIED CONSERVATIVE INTERFACE TREATMENT FOR ARBITRARILY OVERSET AND PATCHED MULTI-ZONE GRIDS IN COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS and AN INNOVATIVE AIR-TURBO ROCKER (ATR) SCRAMJET PROPULSION SYSTEM AND SUPPORTING DESIGN APPROACH. It has grown linearly from five employees in 1987 to 100 today, half with PhDs. If the average VC had invested $12M for half the company and got the average 42% return on $12M, the market cap of the company be something like $200M. Think CFD has such a value? Was it an efficient government investment in a capital venture program? If you are a simulation house, take heart - don't just read the words of the SBIR theory, study what government actually funds.

Concert Pharmaceuticals (Lexington, MA)

Concert Pharmaceuticals (Lexington, MA; no SBIR) has quietly raised more than $95 M VC since its founding two years ago, ... trying to develop medicines for hot flashes for postmenopausal women and other conditions using a heavy version of hydrogen ... 40 employees [Boston Globe, Apr 30, 08]

Concordia Fibers (Coventry, RI)

Concordia Fibers (Coventry, RI; no SBIR) got another investment from the state-backed early-stage Slater Technology Fund. Founded in 1920 as a manufacturer of textiles, moved into the business of making synthetic materials for biomedical devices in 2003. [Mass High Tech, Aug 27]

Concurrent Technologies (Johnstown, PA)

It's Whom You Know. Concurrent Technologies began two decades ago doing metalworking research in Pennsylvania's struggling rust belt. In the years since, the Johnstown, Pa., company has become a federal contracting chameleon. It is an intelligence adviser, an environmental consultant and a software engineering specialist. It has trained mine-detecting dogs and managed religion-based initiatives. It oversees construction projects, organizes conferences and studies ways to use hydrogen for fuel in Pennsylvania and South Carolina. Missile-defense research is part of its portfolio. So is the development of special armor for combat vehicles in Iraq and "solid waste technology" in Florida. And it is a nonprofit charity. Behind the rise of Concurrent is Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee, [Robert O'Harrow, Washington Post, Nov 2]

Conductus (Sunnyvale, CA)

Cutting People Costs. Conductus says it is slicing salaries 15% for its remaining 66 employees.[Wall Street Journal, Oct 15] These are times when employees wish they worked for government R&D contractors where the government re-imburses the company for actual costs and salary cuts don't help company's finances. Conductus was once in that situation before casting its lot with the private markets. It had eight DOD Phase 2 SBIRs. mostly in the enthusiastic HTSC days of the early 90s.

Although it reported no news yesterday, Conductus shot up 36%. Last week it reported an $800K government contract extension, not the stuff of 36% rises.

The Shadow thinks Conductus is cloaked in overvaluation and should be considered a prime short candidate. Given Thursday's closing price of $17.13, the company has a market cap of about $197M. But over the last 12 months Conductus has only generated $6.8M in sales. That gives it a price/sales ratio of 29 times, which is not terrible, but underneath I smell trouble. Four quarters ago (June 1999), Conductus posted revenue of $5.6M, by far its greatest quarter ever, and a number the company has not come close to since then. Poring over the 10-Q for last year's June quarter, the surge in revenue came from a one-time licensing fee of $5 million from General Dynamics. ... In the March quarter, sales declined 74% year-over-year. Conductus blamed the sharp drop in sales on "decreases in revenues from government contracts and government product sales, which resulted from the completion of several contracts and delays in the anticipated start date of new contracts in 2000." .. Bottom Line: Conductus has had 25 straight quarters of losses. It will not make a dime this year. If the field trials go well, it could make some money in 2001, but that is sheer conjecture at this point. At $19, I think investors are giving Conductus too much credit. [Tom Byrne, Individual Investor, Jun 16

Superconductors Must Be Cool. Another 30% mover yesterday was Conductus ,a once hot prospect for high temp superconductors from the magic of 1987 scientific discoveries. At 24, though CDTS is 48 times its low of $0.50 last year. It is even now more than double its 1993 IPO price. The other SBIR supported HTSC companies did not follow the leader.

New Warmth in Cold Superconductor Stock(Dec 23) The morbid superconductor field came alive as Conductus shot up 35% on news that it has raised another $15M and said that its first urban TDMA field trials of its ClearSite� system expanded busy-hour capacity by 80% at a major cellular carrier's site in a highly-populated urban area. This improvement represents a potential revenue increase of $300,000 per year, resulting in a payback of the carrier's investment in its ClearSite system within approximately two months.

Conductus (SUNNYVALE, CA) got a $1.67M contract from Loral to develop low-loss tunable microwave devices for wireless and satellite communications. Conductus will use its specialty - thin-film tunable-dielectric materials and high-performance, high-temperature superconductor (HTS) filter technology. The idea is lower costs in manufacturing existing products and new wireless products with at least ten times today's performance. Who's really paying? DARPA's FAME (Frequency Agile Materials for Electronics) At least it's not SBIR, just the usual government R&D with the usual hype. [PRNewswire, Aug 18]

Conductus (Sunnyvale, CA) lost another $2.6M last quarter on revenues of only $1.1M. Superconducting is still a technology of the future; all three SC companies with SBIR support have done badly since going public in 1993. Which doesn't prevent DOD from continuously investing SBIR in it despite the theory that SBIR is for innovations with commercial potential, not just good science that may be useful someday. Then again, "commercial potential" has a flexible meaning in SBIR.

Conductus (Sunnyvale, CA) will close its Instrumentation and Systems Division in San Diego whose 20 people develop superconducting technologies for use in scientific instruments. Conductus President Shalvoy said the move was part of a strategic decision to focus on its markets in wireless communications and health care. It will sell some assets to Bruker Instruments where some workers will go. [San Diego Union Tribune, Aug 6] That SD unit started life with a BMDO SBIR as a spinoff of another bureauscience company and provided the product thrust that Sunnyvale lacked. It merged with Conductus just before Conductus went public at $10. Conductus is still losing a pile, $2.3M in the last quarter, while the stock languishes around $5.

ConjuGon (Madison, WI)

ConjuGon (Madison WI; $1.5M SBIR) developing a unique anti-bacterial technology, has received a $1.2M grant from DOD to help fund development of its novel wound infection treatment product. ConjuGon's technology uses genetically modified, harmless bacteria to transfer DNA into the bacteria that are causing infection in a wound. It has been able to kill strains of bacteria, including E. coli and salmonella, that were resistant to all relevant antibiotics. The company is aiming to bring to market first a product for large wounds such as those caused by burns or traumatic injuries. [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Dec 7] It has also raised at least $4M VC in the last two years.

Consonus Technologies (Cary NC)

Consonus Technologies,(Cary NC; no SBIR) formerly Strategic Technologies, filed an IPO; the 18-year-old business will use the $57M to accelerate its evolution from a consultant to a hands-on technology manager. [Raleigh News & Observer, May 9, 07]

Convio (Austin,TX)

Convio (Austin,TX) an unprofitable software company that has racked up $46M in losses in its eight-year history, filed for an [IPO] ... sells software and services to help nonprofit organizations raise more money [Austin American-Statesman, Sep 2]

Cooligy

Cooligy claims a cooling method, out of Stanford's ME department, with common materials for a noiseless closed-loop active cooling system for CPUs, ASICS, graphics chips, and the large programmable gate arrays. The method was prototyped in cooperation with DARPA, but does not show as an SBIR project. The inventor professors sold the idea and went back to academia. Which brings up one of the false assumptions behind SBIR - that small companies are better at inventing technology. They are NOT better at inventing, but the good ones can do what academics and other inventors cannot do - be an agile entrepreneur in getting the thing into a market. SBIR agencies do just the opposite - they fund companies with average technical competence and and put little value on entrepreneuring. Oh sure, the companies all think they are hot stuff.

Corcept Therapeutics

Under congressional pressure, Stanford University is temporarily pulling a faculty member off a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant involving a company in which he owns millions of dollars in stock. The company, Corcept Therapeutics (no SBIR), is testing the drug mifepristone as a treatment for depression, and Alan Schatzberg is principal investigator on a multipart NIH grant that includes a mifepristone depression study. Although Stanford says Schatzberg had reported his stock and was not involved with the trial, university officials last week told NIH that they "can see how" the situation "may create an appearance of conflict of interest." [Science, Aug 8]

CoreStreet (Cambridge, MA)

CoreStreet Ltd. (Cambridge, MA; no SBIR) got an investment from the CIA's venture arm, In-Q-Tel, to support the development of smart-card security technology, including electronic locks [Mass High Tech, Mar 25]

Coretek (Burlington, MA)

the Boston loyalists are being dispersed, and with them, what most compound semi industry insiders regard as the best tunable VCSEL technology in the field. ... The CoreTek VCSEL had also scored several design wins based on its full Telecordia qualification, fortified with multiple tens of thousands of hours of lifetime testing. Thus the formal excuse from Nortel that CoreTek's tunable VCSEL was "too advanced for the market" simply doesn't make sense, [the full story of the suspected conspiracy]

From $1.5B to an empty factory. Nortel Networks is closing its CoreTek unit that it bought for a nominal $1.5B in inflated stock. At the time it was a dream story for SBIR of a shoe-string start-up. But even the best best new technology goes at least into hibernation when the market over-expands. About 160 employees in the Boston area will need a new home.

While CoreTek folds, Picolight expands to 140 employees and gets another round of venture finance. Picolight is the creation of Jack Jewell, who was the technical founder of Vixel, and an early user of BMDO SBIR to get started. In those 1990s, BMDO believed in the power of starting innovation. For some stories of what happened to those lucky companies, stay tuned to BMDO's Technology Update where they at least still talk about the successes from earlier investments.

Tunable lasers trip the light fantastic A year ago, Nortel Networks spent $1.4B to buy a little-known company called CoreTek which planned to make an even more obscure product: tunable lasers. Since its brief emergence from obscurity to telecom start-up jackpot of the week, CoreTek has been growing from 100 to 340 people. It has developed a fantastically complex 14-step robotic assembly line in nearby Billerica to begin mass production of a device that promises to slash the already plunging costs of optical bandwidth, which in turn will make phone calls and Internet access steadily cheaper. ... CoreTek and Nortel are optimistic that they are in one of the bright spots of the optical world today. ''In this business, we are still growing,'' said Parviz Tayebati, the founder of CoreTek. ... CoreTek has developed a laser transmitting device that can be ''tuned'' to any of 60 to 80 different channels, so a single device can be used to replace dozens of different ones in the optical switches made by Nortel, Lucent Technologies, Sycamore Networks and other companies. ... In CoreTek's case, the tuning is accomplished inside each package by microscopic machinery that can slide a lens smaller than the letter `O' by increments of 1 millionth of a centimeter and lock it in place - roughly comparable to turning a prism to change the color of sunlight coming out. .... Their new 300,000-ft2 production site features a robotic assembly line that builds the laser packages in 14 steps that take about 60 minutes from beginning to end, a time CoreTek hopes to cut dramatically as it smooths out production processes. Down the road, Nortel has plans of spinning off CoreTek and three other component and microelectronic units in Canada and England as a separate company. [Peter Howe, Boston Globe, Mar 30] BMDO SBIR can take a lot of credit for getting CoreTek into business when Tayebati left Foster-Miller to make technology that sells.

Nortel to Expand CoreTek
(Jul 26) Having bought CoreTek for $1.4B, Nortel will now expand the plant as part of a nearly $2B expansion in Massachusetts. The world leader in the red-hot optical networking market will build two major facilities in Wilmington and Billerica and hire about 1,800 workers to staff them. The plants are part of a massive worldwide expansion by Nortel, aimed at locking down its lead in the market for systems that use pulses of light to transmit information much faster than traditional copper wires. Chahram Bolouri, president of global operations for Nortel, said the company will build a 100,000-square-foot addition at the CoreTek plant, which will employ 775 people. CoreTek manufactures tunable lasers capable of sending multiple frequencies along the same fiber. [Boston Globe, Jul 25] BMDO SBIR got CoreTek started.

CoreTek Bought for $1.4B
(Mar 22) CoreTek (Wilmington, MA) agreed to be bought by Nortel Networks for up to US$1.43B in Nortel Networks common shares if and when CoreTek meets certain milestones. Nortel says that CoreTek's tunable lasers and other next-generation tunable optical components will further strengthen Nortel Networks first-mover advantage in delivering aflexible, high-performance all-optical Internet CoreTek got started with a Phase 2 SBIR from BMDO in 1995 after founder Parviz Tayebati bounded out of SBIR-Champ Foster-Miller. It now has 120 employees and still without sales. The VCs who put in $26M last year will be rejoicing at an exit strategy that does not include the rigors of going public. SBIR economic nationalists can moan over the purchase of an SBIR firm by a foreign company. An Iranian got USG money to start a company that he sold to a Canadian firm. Grrrr! On the other hand if the USG had taken a proportional equity for those first SBIR's, say 20%, the Treasury would have $300M (to pay BMDO to run more anti-missile tests before the big political wrangle starts later this year). What does Parviz get out of it for the loss of his control of HIS company, his dream machine, as many SBIR proposers moan that they need government succor to avoid? Since he did only two rounds of financing, he probably has at least 20% left which would be a cool $300M.
If YOU want to follow Parviz's track to fame and fortune, start with a BMDO SBIR in your company's infancy. Bring an idea for a disruptive innovation. Round up some real capitalists for Phase 2 so you look like an entrepreneur instead of just another scientist. Tell a story of building an explosive business if you can just prove that the idea really works. Show a growing private investment as the technical uncertainties melt away within, say, $1-2M. A bunch have done it, and more keep coming through BMDO's door every week. Not one, though, is without scars of battle over what is a real business prospect and what is just wishful thinking.

Need a role model? Try CoreTek (Wilmington, MA). Parviz Tayebati leaped out of doing SBIRs for SBIR gathering champ Foster-Miller to start his own company in photonics. He got a Phase 2 SBIR from BMDO to get started in 1995. Last year he closed two rounds of VC finance, $6M early and then $20M in October to go into the goal of high-tech companies - manufacturing. His product? That optical correlator he got the first Phase 2 for? Oh no, too busy to tinker with that any more. MEMS for WDM is in demand as fibercom markets blossom. Need a commercialization strategy model for a decent SBIR proposal - no, not the usual blather - try Parviz's market opportunities page.

CoreTek Prints a Future (Oct 9) CoreTek's CEO Parviz Tayebati says that the new optical correlator funded by BMDO as CoreTek's first SBIR is working like a charm, recognizing all the fingerprints fed it with no errors at 16000 prints/sec. After two trade shows CoreTek has three significant customers ($$, $$$, and $$$$) and has started pursuing "the big boys who provide systems to the FBI etc". (Maybe someday Parviz can mimic Roger Little's saying how talk at trade shows leads to a 10% stock price increase.) The fingerprint reading idea gets more credence from Ken Gosselin's Hartford Courant story (Oct 8) on Connecticut's preventing $9M in potential welfare fraud in the last year using digital fingerprint scanners, and on MasterCard's testing fingerprint scanning, to cut 80% of fraudulent charges. One such system by Identicator Technology Corp (San Bruno, CA) assigns a secure numerical code to a person's fingerprint describing features such as the location of ends of selected fingerprint ridges. The code is loaded onto a computer chip embedded in a credit card. Since such business expansion can often conflict with far-out innovation R&D, Parviz has spun off QuantaImage Corp which, under a small private investment and licenses from CoreTek, will focus only on imaging applications. Thus investors can have a clearer picture of CoreTek's businesses.
CoreTek got a big step up with BMDO's SBIR. BUT, Parviz would have made it anyway. His success should be grabbed by the SBIR advocates to promote their agenda of keeping the program alive. The few stories like CoreTek may provide just enough success as cover story for most of the money producing little quantifiable return on investment.

CoreTek's New SLM
(Sep 18) The two new spatial light modulators of CoreTek (Burlington, MA) will cost $1500-3000 and compete directly with Hughes Danbury, says Laser Focus World, Sep97] Founder Parviz Tayebati says the gadgets recognize Coretek's employees by their fingerprints (and probably their enthusiasm) and will be publicly shown next week at Technology 2007. The gadgets arose from CoreTek's first SBIR, from BMDO. Parviz jumped out of the SBIR champ Foster-Miller and is having the problem that all successful growing start-ups are having these days - hiring the right people.

Corgenix Medical (Broomfield, CO)

Corgenix Medical (Broomfield, CO; no SBIR) developer and marketer of diagnostic test kits, has announced an expansion of the collaborative effort for developing test kits for viral hemorrhagic fever detection. The products are being produced under a grant awarded by NIH and were developed by Corgenix in collaboration with Tulane University, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, BioFactura (Rockville, MD; $800K SBIR), Autoimmune Technologies (New Orleans, LA; $1M SBIR), and various partners in West Africa. [Denver Post, Jul 16, 08]

Cornerstone Research (Dayton, OH)

Cornerstone Therapeutics (Cary, NC; no SBIR) is expanding its portfolio of drugs and strengthening its balance sheet with a deal that gives an Italian pharmaceutical company a majority ownership stake. ... will receive $15.5 million in cash and the exclusive U.S. rights to Curosurf, a treatment for respiratory distress syndrome, a lung ailment that afflicts premature infants. ... formed in October when Critical Therapeutics (no SBIR) and Cornerstone BioPharma (no SBIR) merged. [Raleigh News & Observer, May 8, 09] not to be confused with Cornerstone Research (Dayton OH; 60 SBIR projects for something like $25M)

Cornerstone Therapeutics (Cary, NC)

Creare (Hanover, NH)

Loving Experience. Scientific Systems (Woburn,MA; $50M+ SBIR) won a NASA JPL Phase 2 SBIR for Distributed Formation State Estimation Algorithms Under Resource and Multi-Tasking Constraints. Creare (Hanover NH; $120M SBIR) won four NASA JPL Phase 2 SBIRs. Intelligent Automation (Rockville MD; $100M SBIR) won three NASA JPL Phase 2 SBIRs. Physical Optics (Torrance, CA; $200M SBIR) won one NASA JPL Phase 2 SBIR. Radiation Monitoring Devices (Watertown, MA; $90M SBIR) won one NASA JPL Phase 2 SBIR. Etc, etc, etc. A zillion start-ups all over America got letters saying there was not enough money to nurture their ideas.

Creare (Hanover, NH) has blossomed from its SBIR days to a company of 1100 people. Says its website, Creare began with five people in 1961, and the family of companies tracing their origins to Creare now employs over 1100. Our original roots were in fluid dynamics. We served the turbomachinery and nuclear industries heavily during the 1960s and 1970s. The 1980s saw a branching into the energy, aerospace, cryogenics, and materials processing industries, among others. The 1990s brought growth in software, controls, and biomedical applications. Today, Creare remains an employee-owned engineering services company, committed to solving problems for our clients and commercializing our own technologies through licensing or the creation of independent product companies. The growth and vitality of Creare and the family of companies that trace their origins to us is compelling evidence of our success. Current members of the Creare family include:
Hypertherm manufactures plasma arc cutting equipment. Founded 1968.
Creonics (now a part of the Allen-Bradley division of Rockwell International) manufactures motion control systems for a wide variety of industrial processes. Founded 1982.
Spectra manufactures components and systems for ink jet computer printers. Founded 1984.
Fluent develops, markets, and licenses CFD software. Founded 1988.
Mikros provides precision micromachining services. Founded in 1991.
SBA reports 197 SBIR projects over 15 years with about half going into Phase 2. From rough calculations, that would make a government contribution (for which the government presumably got its intended R&D value) of $70M.

Creative Hybrid Solutions (Somewhere, NC)

Creative Hybrid Solutions (Somewhere, NC; no SBIR) say the magnets can improve auto fuel performance by more than 30%. ... a bold claim for a technology dismissed for years as snake oil. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 2004 sued another magnet marketer for making "bogus claims" on fuel performance. After testing magnets with similar claims, Popular Mechanics magazine also dismissed them as duds. [Raleigh News & Observer, Oct 18, 08] Quick, think of a credible mechanism. A systematic road test, beyond unverifiable anecdotes supplied by the company, will at least come from Raleigh and Wake schools tests to evaluate the potential for installing magnets on 963 fleet vehicles in their town.

Cree (born Cree Research) (Durham, NC)

Cree now expects revenue of $143 million to $150 million for the quarter ending June 28, above analysts' expectations and more than the company's earlier prediction [Raleigh News 7 Observer, May 27, 09]

Two of the Triangle's most successful home-grown technology companies -- Cree and Red Hat -- are the subject of takeover speculation. No wonder. Both are tantalizing targets because they are performing strongly in the recession. More important, they appear to have bright futures. Larger companies seeking new growth engines see dollar signs ... Takeover speculation about both companies has surfaced many times in the past without coming to fruition. [David Ranii, Raleigh News & Observer, Apr 3, 09]

Cree up 10% [Mar 18, 09]

Cree made a deal to supply chips to one of the world's largest makers of liquid-crystal displays. LG Display Co. agreed to buy the chips to make backlights used in flat-panel screens. [Raleigh News & Observer, Jan 29, 08]

Cree up 14% [Jan 21, 09] fiscal second-quarter net income jumped 62% on strong sales of light-emitting diode products, helping results beat the company's forecast. [Wall Street Journal, Jan 22]

Cree up 10% [Jan 6, 09]

Cree up 11% [Dec 8, 08]

Cree down 11% [Dec 4, 08]

Cree up 10% [Oct 28, 08]

Cree down 11% [Oct 21, 08]

Cree down 15% [Sep 29, 08]

Cree up 11% [Sep 19, 08]

Cree up 14% [Sep 18, 08]

Cree up 16% [Aug 13, 08] on healthy profits.

Cree LEDs are stars of show .... Tiny chips made in Durham NC will light up the Beijing Olympics. ...an estimated 4 billion people worldwide will watch dazzling, computerized light shows centered partly around the iconic Bird's Nest and Water Cube buildings.... lights were built using more than 750,000 red, blue and green LED chips made at Cree's factory in Durham In addition, Cree LEDs will illuminate massive video boards in Beijing and TV kiosks throughout the Olympics complex. ... It could aid a broader push by Cree, founded by N.C. State alumni 21 years ago, to capture more of the market for energy efficient lighting. Five years ago, Cree's light-emitting diodes were mostly used to illuminate cell phones, signs, car dashboards and other electronics. Now the company's LEDs can be found in parking-garage lights in Raleigh, high-end homes in Durham, streetlights in Anchorage and office lights across Asia. ... The Olympics gig started for Cree when a Chinese contractor bidding to build the National Aquatics Center asked for Cree's help. Once the company won that contract last year, other contractors started calling....About half of the company's 2,600 worldwide work force is in Durham, where Cree builds chips 24 hours a day, seven days a week....Cree last year bought a Chinese lighting company to expand its foothold in that country. While Cree has sales, marketing and research staff in China, it still makes its chips only in Durham. ... Even as sales of its lighting products climb, demand for LEDs used in cell phones and other electronics has slowed, hurting Cree's profit. The company's stock is down about 30% in the past year. [Alan Wolf, Raleigh News&Observer, Aug 8, 08] The premium SBIR story if you measure the economic impact obtained from a couple of million dollars as about 20% of Cree's starting capital. The same ROI calculation that a real VC would make. If the cheerleaders want to make an economic argument for SBIR, they have to use some realistic ROI criteria. Otherwise, it's just jobs for the boys.

Cree down 10% [Aug 1, 08]

Cree down 17% [Apr 22, 08] on disappointing outlook.

Cree reported surging sales [Apr 22, 08] that beat Wall Street expectations but failed to brighten the bottom line. [Raleigh News & Observer]

Of the 15 game-changing startups likely to upend existing industries - and spawn new entrepreneurial opportunities, two used SBIR - Cree and A123 Systems. Business 2.0 also named One Laptop Per Child, Desktop Factory, Renewable Energy Group, Zink, Vanu, Bloom Energy, PatientstLikeMe, Virgin Charter, MFG.com, Zipcar, Expensr, Raydiance, and Blinkx.

Cree is increasing its bet on the burgeoning market for energy-efficient lights [saying] it will buy LED Lighting Fixtures (Morrisville NC) for up to $100M+. LED Lighting is run by F. Neal Hunter, who 20 years ago co-founded Cree. ... Buying LED Lighting will add $1 M to Cree's revenue for the current quarter and $30M in revenue during the fiscal year that starts in June. Cree reported $394M in revenue in its last fiscal year. [Alan Wolf and David Ranii, Raleigh News&Observer, Feb 9, 08]

Austin is the latest city to endorse Cree's LED lighting movement. The Texas technology hub follows Raleigh, Toronto and Ann Arbor, Mich., in joining LED Cities, a partnership started by Cree to promote the use of energy-efficient light-emitting diodes by municipalities worldwide. [Raleigh News&Observer, Jan 31, 08]

Cree up 11% [Jan 23, 08] reported a surge in second-quarter sales Tuesday and raised its third-quarter forecast above analysts' estimates. With uses for its products multiplying, the Durham company said manufacturing investments made last year in Asia enabled it to meet rising demand. [Frank Norton, Raleigh News&Observer, Jan 23] US company, started with lots of help from SBIR, follows economic imperative to move its manufacturing to the lowest cost point.

Cree up 14% [Jan 16, 08] Motley Fool Jan 14, 08 sees Cree as a future monster stock. Its $2.3B market cap makes it one of the few SBIR's monster stocks where SBIR would have a large piece of a large equity if its investment had acquired a proportionate percent of the early venture capital.

Cree up 11% [Dec 26, 07]

Cree up 15% [Nov 26, 07] on the news that Genlyte, a large manufacturer of lighting fixtures, has agreed to be purchased by Philips for $2.7 B.

Cree is converting all the lights in its Durham headquarters and manufacturing plant to the energy-efficient LEDs that it designs and manufactures. [Raleigh News&Observer, Nov 2. 07]

Electric utility giant Duke Energy and Cree launched a project that evaluates the use of light-emitting diodes in widespread commercial purposes [bizjournals.com, Oct 15,07]

Cree announced release of a new 8-amp, Zero Recovery(r) rectifier that significantly increases power-supply efficiency in computer servers. The new CSD08060 Schottky diode extends Cree's leadership in rectifiers that save energy while boosting power-supply performance. [company press release Oct 12, 07]

Cree down 11% [Oct 3, 07] after an analyst said the company is likely to miss earnings estimates and that rumors of a buyout aren't true. [bizjournals.com]

Cree is trading at its 52-week high, a sign that rumors about the sale of the company continue to circulate Wall Street despite no deal being in place. [bizjournals.com, Sep 20, 07]

Cree surged on rumors ... could get bought by General Electric. ... Analysts have long speculated GE may try to gobble up Cree to get ahead in one fell swoop, rather than invest years in research and distribution partnering. ... up 54% so far this year. [Raleigh News & Observer, Sep 2]

Cree co-founder named one of '50 Who Matter Now' Lifelong problem solver John Edmond is close to meeting his greatest challenge: making clean, energy-efficient lights affordable to the masses. It's a problem Edmond has been working on for nearly 20 years, and one that is bringing the co-founder of Cree national attention. [Raleigh News & Observer, Jul 6]

Blue is Golden. Longtime [Cree] investors are no better off than they were in 2000. ... But, Andrew Huang, an analyst with American Technology Research in California, wrote in a recent report. "We believe in the coming years, Cree will return to its old highs." ... founded by N.C. State University engineers in 1987, has grown into a global corporation with annual sales approaching half a billion dollars. It employs 1,300 locally, about half its worldwide work force. It's in the midst of a $300 M manufacturing expansion at its Durham campus, aided by state incentives worth as much as $5.1 M. It's profitable, with little debt. [Frank Norton, Raleigh News & Observer, Jun 12, 07] Cree started with silicon carbide technology which was good for blue diodes and lasers. It became one of the best investments SBIR ever made by any honest economic standard for ROI. Would that the rest of SBIR could also stand an economic evaluation instead of the political blather coming from the advocates for yet another re-authorization without any reform. Whether pep talk about the stock price has any import? Who knows?

In bubbleland, Cree up 10% after an analyst said it could double in year. [June 1, 07]

Raleigh [NC] city officials said today they will expand a partnership with Cree to install possibly thousands of energy-efficient lights citywide ... The initiative, in which Cree deployed 141 light-emitting diodes, has shown to use 40% less energy than a standard lighting system [Raleigh News and Observer, Feb 12]

Cree will buy a Hong Kong company- COTCO Luminant Device - for about $200M. Cree also made a deal to supply LEDs to a Chinese light-fixture maker. Cree makes a superb example of just what SBIR was supposed to be designed to do. and should be doing, an early substantial boost from SBIR by SDIO and ONR. But Cree- quality start-ups are hard to find and SBIR money far exceeds the opportunities to invest in such start-ups. So, the SBIR advocates pretend that the nation actually doesn't invest enough in start-ups and the federal agencies go along with the game by putting the excess money into their favorite R&D efforts with little regard to any investment criteria. Cree fell 13% after lowering its estimates of sales. [Dec 7, 06] Cree makes one of the top SBIR stories since the ROI would be fantastic under any investment calculation.

Cree opened a new 230,000-square-foot plant that should help end the manufacturing logjam that recently has left Cree unable to meet customer demand for its light-emitting diode products, slicing sales and Cree's stock price (down by half since April). [Anne Krishnan, Raleigh News and Observer, Aug 9]

Cree took a 22% hit (7/13/06) after it cut its quarterly profit guess.

Cree agreed to acquire INTRINSIC Semiconductor Corp. for $46M. [Jun 06]

[LED] technology remained on the fringes of industry for decades. Nichia and Cree changed that in the 1990s by broadening the LED color palette, which previously had been limited to red, yellow and green. The breakthrough came in 1993, when Nichia, Toyoda Gosei (part-owned by Toyota Motor Co.) and, soon afterward, Cree conquered blue, marking the final step to creating combinations that would fill out the color spectrum, including white. Major manufacturers took notice. In 1999, GE formed GELcore, a venture with chip maker Emcore Corp., to get back into the LED business. [Evan Ramstad and Kathryn Kranhold, Wall Street Journal, Jun 8 Cree is one of SBIR's few great successes where early support of infant technology launched a revolution. White 60-watt incandescent light sources is the target color for Color Kinetics part of a $7 M round of DOE funding for the development of new LED-based solid-state lighting technologies. Other partners: GE, Osram, Kodak, and SRI. [Mass High Tech, Jun 8] DOE apparently doesn't believe in markets that know how to develop and sell lights once the technical hurdles are o'erleapt and the question is reduced to market economics. But then if you are a government guy, you can accept the idea that everything good can be done by government.

Cree rose15% after first-quarter earnings came in 20% above street consensus.

Cree says it will invest $100M in capital equipment in its FY06.

Cree got a five-year $20M cost share/technology investment government contract. to establish a domestic source to develop a manufacturing capability for Silicon Carbide Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit Devices for commercial applications and next generation military radar systems. [Sep 05]

Hit the Numbers or Dive. Cree got nailed 26% when it said that second quarter profit doubled and revenue rose 34%; BUT revenue still missed expectations.

Cree jumped (up) 12% when it reported record revenue and profits for the year. Revenue up 34% to $306M and profits up 66% to $58M..Its core product: ever brighter blue light that started with late-80s SBIR funding from SDIO and ONR when the founders exploited their SiC knowledge from their NC State grad schooling. A few million SBIR dollars later (SDIO would give bigger contracts for potentially explosive technology) they were launched into a 1993 IPO.

As long as its customers want LEDs, Sumitomo will buy $160M worth of them from Cree. CEO Chuck Swoboda, called it the largest purchase commitment in Cree�s history. Cree is one of those rare SBIR economic success stories where a little nursery money went a long way. In a separate development, Cree announced three more LED products for mobile appliances. [Thanks to MDA's Tech App folks for the stories.]

Two of the best SBIR companies, ever, made a deal. Cree will buy ATMI's gallium nitride business - intellectual property, fixed assets, and inventory - for some unspecified quantum of cash. Both companies got started in the 80s in the semiconductor business with a helpful dose of SBIR when Cree was a bunch of NC State grads and ATMI was four guys in a garage. Both went on the graduate to publicly held companies making healthy profits in a world where most SBIR companies can't (or won't) go nowhere. Both focused their SBIR requests on businesses they could turn into profit makers. They didn't apply for SBIR just because they could win; they knew about opportunity cost. [Mar 04]

Love the Markets? Learn to Compete. Nichia just reduced prices by 40% for white LEDs for wireless handsets ... although Cree's March quarter "may be tracking well, industry trends are unfavorable. [Michelle Rama, Dow Jones News Wire, Mar 4] Cree's stock price took a hit when international competition lowered the offered price on LEDs, the cream of Cree's market. Cree makes the chip portion of the LED for cell phones and then sells it to packagers that add the coatings and sell the finished product. If your wonderful technology makes a handsome profit and has any competitor, your pricing power is only as good as your monopoly position.

National Medal for Carter. Cal Carter was one of the 16 Presidential awardees of the National Medals of Science and Technology - an unheard of honor for an SBIR company. Cal helped found Cree which soon got about 20% of its starting capital (according to Cal) from SBIR (SDIO of course). Cree is one of the rare SBIR companies that has returned a decent profit for its venture investors after having gone public in 1993 and risen to a market cap of 1.5B even after its market cap peak five times that in 2000 when the dotcom bubble burst for infotech companies.

Making Money . Cree reported another doubled profit but some of it came from selling second-quality chips to low quality users. Although sales increased 36%, some analysts questioned the need to lower prices by about 10% to induce buyers for phones, car dashboards and other electronic devices. That was due to increased competition from rivals overseas and a new sales strategy. The company sold chips that didn't meet manufacturing standards at steep discounts to customers who wanted them anyway. It pulled down the average selling price. [Raleigh News and Observer, Oct 17]

Cree says it will sell 500M LED chips to OSRAM Opto Semiconductors GmbH over the next 21 months. Of the many SBIR companies with actually new technology, Cree is one of the few making real money to support a PE ratio of 40. Still, it is down (and up) to a sixth of its bubble high.

Blood Feud at Cree. Spencer Ante (Business Week, Aug 11) describes the feud between the Hunter brothers over control and doings at Cree. The saga of Cree and the Hunter brothers is a cautionary tale of how family feuds can dim a company's promise. Since the lawsuit was filed, Cree's stock has tumbled by 39%, to around $14 a share, slicing $700 million off its market capitalization. Short-sellers are swarming: With 33% of its shares sold short, Cree has the second-largest short-interest ratio on the NASDAQ. At least 15 class actions have been filed against Cree, echoing many of the charges outlined in Eric's complaints. Even though, Cree could have a bright future. The LED market is soaring, and Cree is one of the leading players, along with Nichia, Toyoda Gosei, and Osram. Because LEDs generally use less power and last longer, many scientists believe that as costs come down over the next 10 to 20 years they could replace Thomas Edison's lightbulb and reinvent the $40B illumination market.

Sue Thy Brother. The Hunter brothers are having a family feud over Cree's business practices. Co-founder Eric Hunter is suing his brother Neal and Cree for $3 BILLION for securities violations, defamations, and personal threats. What's more the suit charges that third brother Jeff conspired to accept unlimited deliveries of Cree product to inflate sales. The company says that Eric has been whispering allegations for years. Whatta mess, and the news hit Cree stock 19% on Friday the 13th, and down 27% for the week. .

How disappointing - only a $10M profit for the quarter - and the source of a 13% drop in stock price for Cree. Turns out that although bottom-line profit was good, the top line was down. Kopin alos took a 15% hit but not for making only $10M.

Cree signed a $100M deal with Sumitomo for Cree's blue spectrum LED chip, the largest contract in Cree's history. Compound Semiconductor News April 7 also reports that CoreTek is back under the name Ahura in Wilmington, MA,, and that Picolight and IBM showed a new VCSEL-based standard in bandwidth density.

Cree's stock price has doubled in the last month on drumbeat of positive news (or at least non-negative). It settled a GaN dispute with Nichia by cross-licensing and in line with a general rise in semi-conductor stocks. Even Cypress was the top percentage gainer one day. It reported a $3.8M quarterly profit (subject to the usual accounting gyrations). Meanwhile ATMI, which is not reporting profits, gained about 50%. [Dec 02]

The Black Art of Digital Light . At Cree researchers made two breakthroughs last year that tripled the brightness of their LEDs, leapfrogging their main rival, Nichia of Japan. Just one thing: They don't really know how they did it. ..says CEO Charles Swoboda "There are theories, that's all. We know what works, but not how it works." Cree makes the LEDs that Color Kinetics and others use in lighting applications. .. The economic slowdown is behind Cree's latest breakthroughs. As orders fell off, Cree converted production lines into R&D lines and tripled its experimental batches. In nine months the brightness of Cree's chips leaped from 5 to 15 milliwatts--not bad, considering it took two years to go from 3 milliwatts to 5 milliwatts. Cree got a big break in 1997, when Volkswagen started using its LEDs in their dashboards. ... Cree's sales for fiscal 2002 (ended June 30) exceeded $150M, [Daniel Lyons, Forbes, Oct 14]

Cree won the biggest government contract in its history, a total of $26M from Air Force and Navy research organizations - a huge amount for such organizations which normally award small exploratory contracts. Cree is being awarded an $8.1 million cost-share contract to develop 4H-Silicon Carbide substrates with reduced micropipe density, develop a multi-water, horizontal hot-wall chemical vapor deposition susceptor and process for SiC epitaxial growth, and advance the state of the arts in 3" and 4" thick epiwafers suitable for microwave power device applications, develop processing technology and fabricate vertical Diffused Metal Oxide Semi-Conductor Field Effect Transitor devices and develop SiC pin devices. This contract contains options which, if exercised, will bring the total cumulative value of this contract to $10.76 million. Work will be performed in Durham, N.C., and is expected to be completed by December 2003. [Wall Street Journal, July 2]

Cree says its 405 nm, 3 mW blue laser diodes project a lifetime over 10,000 hours at room temperature. From sampling tests going back to December and customer evaluations, the company believes its blue laser diodes will satsify the new uniform standards for the next-generation optical disc format designed to succeed the DVD (digital versatile disc).CEO Swoboda said, ``This is one of the most significant achievements in the history of the company. Recently, Cree also trotted out XBright(TM) 505 nm and 525 nm green light-emitting diode (LED) devices.

Despite an economic slowdown and a slumping stock price, new product announcements have emerged from each of Cree's four primary divisions in recent months. New devices include a brighter light-emitting diode, or LED; a much-awaited blue laser that would allow DVDs to contain four times the data as today's discs; and a new radio-frequency transistor that will allow for more services on cell phones. "These are huge new markets," said Chuck Swoboda, Cree's president and chief executive. "It could really change the game." Started in 1987 by brothers Neil and Eric Hunter and three scientists from N.C. State University in one building in Durham, Cree has grown to a 12-building campus complete with bunker-like security, about 1,000 employees nationwide and a worldwide reputation within the semiconductor industry. [Carlene Hempel, Raleigh News & Observer, Jan 16]

Make Growing Profit, or Take Pain. Cree shares took a 23% hit when the company reported sharply lower earnings and gave a poor forecast for growth in the next two years. Profit was 8 cents a share, down from 18 cents, in the year-earlier period, but the street expected 9 cents a share.

Sell Cree, says Individual Investor because Iffy deal-making plus questionable growth prospects add up to a sell for the LED maker. Meanwhile, Cree rolled out a new MegaBright(TM) blue LED with triple brightness (increased two times), 10mW, of Cree's existing UltraBright(TM) LEDs and equal to the max brightness of competing sapphire-based LEds. Whom do you believe?

Even Cree, a money-making firm, gets pounded by lagging profits. Cree down 31% after poor earnings growth and resultant downgrades by three brokerages. Cree cit3ed slower demand from a softening economy - time for a tax break for LED buyers according the political talk. Forbes called Cree Dog of the Day. White-LED competitor Emcore was up 12% on a report that its order book was filling nicely.

Cree: During the last five years, this North Carolina firm has increased its earnings by an average of 100 percent annually. Cree makes semiconductor devices based on its silicon carbide technology. What does that mean? Well, Cree is a leader in the manufacture of light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which illuminate the tiny screen on your cell phone, for example. Short-sellers have pounded this stock on the theory that Cree's products are becoming "commoditized," but that's still a theory. Meanwhile, it's easy to see the shining numbers on Cree's balance sheet. [James Glassman, "Time To Buy Small Caps? Consider These Five Great Techs", Tech Central Station, Mar 5]

Cree says it has demonstrated a near-UV/violet InGaN LED with a 32% quantum efficiency. This is the highest known external quantum efficiency publicly reported for an LED in the UV-to-blue and exceeds previous results demonstrated by Cree Lighting in July 2000 by 20%. The LED demonstrated emits at 390 nm and has a power output of 21 mW operating at 20 mA. LEDs in the UV and near UV spectrum are essential for making efficient solid state white light sources. The market is less impressed as Cree sells at 30% of its year-ago price although still at 50 times earnings which have been growing nicely.

High Tech to Commodity. dropped 12% when one Wall Street analyst recommended shorting the stock because Cree would have to drop the selling price of its main line of products. SBIR companies typically claim they will commercialize by grabbing the high-end momopoly markets and saying nothing about the inevitable fall in price as the market matures and competitors appear. The government pretends to believe the company's stories.

Cree justified its PE of 60 with a 125% increase in earnings per share for the quarter of $13.8M. That's 18 consecutive quarters of profit which let Cree pay back all its SBIR with $7M in income taxes for the quarter. Cree is one of the handful of companies that pay a return to the governmment for SBIR investment. For those interested in such economic measures of government investment, it's hard to come by since governmment doesn't much care about return. BMDO has about the only quantitative estimates of return which was a hypothetical 46% IRR for the companies that went public. Government could actually do some useful estimates by using just corporate taxes paid as the metric of return.

Cree teamed up with a leading Japanese company - Rohm to make and sell blueLEDs and semiconductor lasers by mid-2001. Rohm calims to be Japan's biggest specialised manufacturer of large-scale integration chips and aims for 20-30% market share of LEDs worth $400M.

A Blue Professor's Chair. Cree pledged $1.2M to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) to endow the Cree Chair in Solid State Lighting and Displays whose occupant would do research in the field of gallium nitride-based materials and devices. Cree will not formally get any technology rights from any research done.

Brain Gain
(Oct 30) In a surprise move, Shuji Nakamura, the pioneer for Nichia Chemical Industries of the blue semiconductor laser based on gallium nitride technology, has joined the Japanese company�s arch rival Cree. The news comes at the same time as Cree announced that it had filed a lawsuit against Nakamura's former employer for patent infringement covering the growth of GaN structures. [Optics.org, Oct 27] Stand by for the usual lawsuits.

Meanwhile the announcement that the Republican show in Philadelphia is using Cree blue and green LEDs for its glitz coincided with a 13% drop in stock price. Less than compassionate conservatism on Wall Street?

Cree took a 10% dive when a mutual fund manager said, Its innovative technology essentially provided a solution in search of a problem.. That fund's biggest holding is SDL says worldlyinvestor.com .It is an earnings oriented growth fund with the sell idea that This fund's sell discipline is tough - the ``cockroach'' theory of earnings. just as where you see one cockroach you can bet there are thousands more you haven't seen. If a company posts even one quarter of disappointing earnings, the managers will sell off at least one-half of the fund's position and possibly sell the entire holding. Ant SBIR company yammering about IPO should have to discuss such philosophies of people likely to own their stock.

Cree Buys Nitres
(Apr 12) Since GaN goes well with SiC to make blue light, Cree bought an SBIR firm that specializaes in GaN, Nitres (Westlake Village, CA) for $2.1M worth of Cree shares at Cree's fluctuating share price. Standing by as proud parent of boith companies is BMDO's SBIR which was a big infant supporter of Cree in the late 80s and a four-time Phase 2 awarder to Nitres in the late-90s. The Cree press release sounds like Cree wants to compete with Emcore's white LED for solid-state lighting that has GE in its marketing corner. Over the past decade, Cree has had lots of chances to buy any of the many GaN firms that got lots of DOD SBIR money. Cree has had the soaring stock price for easy acquisitions. Picking Nitres may say that Cree has finally decided that GaN has reached the point of serious commercialization and out of the dreamy claims of the past decade by scientists wanting to work on GaN with government money.

Five years ago, you could have picked up Cree for $1.50 a share, adjusted for splits. A month ago, you could have bought Cree for about $80. Since then, the ride has been straight up. Cree shares closed at $160 Friday. ...Cree is extracting real profits from its products, which are based on the company's ever-improving silicon-carbide manufacturing processes. In the six months ended in December, Cree earned $10.4 million on revenue of nearly $44 million. That represented a 67 percent increase in sales over the same period in 1998, and a 100 percent increase in profit. When profits grow faster than revenue, that's a big deal. [Raleigh News & Pbserver, Feb 13] Wanna write a convincing SBIR proposal for an agency who cares about commercialization? Say, like BMDO. Study the Cree story and find parallels in your vision about how your market will develop? Don't just wave your hands with "a better noustrap" claim. Everybody does that.

Crazy For Cree
(Feb 7) The big three: Cree, RedHat, and the power company. Investors are going crazy for Cree, boosting the stock price 47% since Monday and transforming the business into the Triangle's third-most-valuable public company with headquarters in the Triangle. Cree closed at $139 per share Thursday, a $19 jump from Wednesday. And that was after a $15 pop the previous day. At this time last year, the stock sold for about $23. The current stock price gives the company a market capitalization of $4.6B. Among Triangle public companies, only Carolina Power & Light and Red Hat are worth more. (And Red Hat is even newer and more speculative than Cree.).. . What's going on? It's no big secret, analysts say. Mostly, investors are beginning to see the potential of Cree products -- in particular the company's super-efficient silicon-carbide chip, which will make traffic lights, dashboards and cell-phone lights shine much longer than conventional lighting. The demand for Cree's stock spiked after Banc of America Securities predicted Tuesday that the company's share price would rise as high as $200 before the end of this year. [Karin Schill, Raleigh News & Obsewrver, Feb 4] What's also going on is a huge momentum in info-tech stocks of all sizes.
Meanwhile, Cree's blue LED competitor - Nichia - sued to stop Sumitomo from selling Cree LEDs in Japan. On patent grounds.

The seemingly bottomless demandfor the company's LEDs fuels its rapid expansion. Cree Research extended its expansion binge by announcing that it plans to spend $8 million to buy a new building across the street from its existing complex. The purchase plans come on top of last week's groundbreaking for a 125,000-square-foot expansion at its headquarters and manufacturing complex on Silicon Drive and Chin Page Road in Durham. Moreover, the semiconductor maker recently finished a 42,000-square-foot expansion of its manufacturing plant. The growth is being fueled by soaring demand for the company's light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, which has created a 12-month order backlog. Among the uses for LEDs are lighting car dashboards and serving as backlights for cellular phones. [Raleigh News & Observer, Dec 22]

Cree's New Wafer
(Oct 13) Cree Research gave Wall Street news it loves to hear - a way to boost production, allowing the company to trim costs and compete in new markets. Cree said it has spent nearly a year developing a new 4-inch wafer used to make single-crystal, silicon-carbide chips. ... Analysts said the wafer will allow Cree to enter more mainstream markets for electronics. "This basically quadruples the number of chips they can produce," said Terry O'Brien, of Cabell, Branch. "It substantially reduces the cost of wafers." And as costs go down, Cree will be able to compete with companies that use different technologies to make wafers. The news sent Cree's traditionally volatile stock up $2.50 to $39.50 a share. During the summer, Cree's stock price doubled in value, mostly because of good news and a higher profile on Wall Street after Cree raised $55.8 million in a secondary stock offering in February. Touted as a breakthrough, the new 4-inch wafer won't be available for commercial use anytime soon, said Fran Barsky, Cree's investor relations manager. ...Cree is the only company that can produce commercial quantities of silicon-carbide wafers, although giant companies such as Motorola, Westinghouse and Philips are experimenting with silicon-carbide transistors and chips made by Cree. [Raleigh News & Observer, Oct 12]

Cree Research (Durham, NC) announced that it is selling significantly less expensive silicon-carbide wafers in an effort to spur greater demand from scientific researchers. Cree said its new 2-inch wafers will sell for $495 apiece, compared with about $1,000 for what had been its least expensive wafers. Scientists are working with silicon-carbide wafers to develop new optoelectronic devices such as lasers. [Raleigh News & Observer, Oct 8]

Number 15 on Fortune's list
(Aug 26) #15 of 100 fastest growing companies is Cree Research. With 123% rise in earnings per share, 56% in revenue, and 72% in total return. That's per year for the past three years. Not bad for five guys from NC State in the late 80s who got some SBIR from SDIO (now BMDO) and ONR to supplement private capital (like the SBIR 1982 legislation said) to start a company to exploit a new idea in electronic grade silicon carbide. Note that even today, the Navy's foresight will not let it give Cree more than the standard SBIR amount per contract. BMDO will give the right amount, although BMDO gets to designate what is "right". Cree went public in 1993.

Sunny Results and a Cloud.
(Jul 30) Record revenue and earnings put Cree Research down in stock price as Herb Greenberg questioned C3's concept in TheStreet.com. Quarterly record revenue was $17.7M, a 53% gain over the previous year's quarter. Profit was $4.1M. For the fiscal year, Cree saw both record revenue of $60,050,000, up 41%and profit of $12.7M, nearly double. New SiC high brightness blue and green LEDs and the increased demand for standard brightness LEDs for general backlighting and other uses lit the way. Return to Index

Cree Splitting Again Cree Splitting Again
(Jul 15) Cree Research said it will split its stock two for one on July 26, the second such split since its 1993 IPO. The stock at $79 is 15 times its IPO price and didn't even budge when two Wall Street houses downgraded it from Strong Buy and a mere Buy presumably after its big recent runup to eight times its September 1998 price. The SBIR investors of 1988 sure look like they picked a winner. If BMDO had taken a proportional equity position at the time (which the government does not do) it would have about a $200M value, 200 times its investment. And the Republicans could plump for another tax cut while the Democrats look for another handout to the voting elderly.

Bright Blue-Cree Jump Bright Blue-Cree Jump
(May 19) Cree Research (Durham, NC) stock jumped 17% on news that that it has jacked up production of its brightest lighting products. That puts Cree 50% above its May 4 price and at a $700M market cap. The bright LEDs in blue and green are 300% brighter than earlier products. One customer, the new Audi TT sports coupe, uses Cree LEDs to illuminate its instrument cluster with white light. [facts from Raleigh News & Observer, May 19] Cree is the type of SBIR that government should focus on. Ten years ago Cree got started with $1M of BMDO/Navy SBIR to SUPPLEMENT its private capital. It knew then what it wanted to do and how to do it.

Cree Earnings Boom
(Apr 19) Cree Research, (Durham, NC) reported record revenue of $16M for the third, half again the same quarter last year. $14M was products Profit grew 92% to $3.4M from $1.8M. In February, the company sold 1.5M shares of common stock. For the nine month period, the company reported record revenue of $42M, a 37% rise. Cree's stock at 47 is almost five times its low last September. Return to Index

Land, Buy Land Flush with $55M from the secondary offering, Cree Research (Durham, NC) bought 80 acres near its plant and headquarters for future expansion. The Durham-based semiconductor maker paid about $19,000 an acre. Cree, which already has a 145K Sqft factory and a 35K sqft office building, says it plans to use the $55M to reduce debt, expand its facility and pay for research and development. Cree is developing a blue-light laser and producing silicone-carbide crystals that C3 uses to make its diamond-like moissanite gems. Note that IF the government had taken an equity position in Cree for its early SBIR, the taxpayer would today have about $150M worth of Cree stock for under $3M of SBIR. Even though the government doesn't do equity, such a hypothetical measure could be used to value the investment efficiency of SBIR. No, of course, neither the government managers nor the winningest companies want to see such a measure even considered.

Cree Raises $55M Cree Raises $55M
(Feb 22) Cree Research (Durham, NC) sold 1.5M shares for $60M for expansion of facilities, debt repayment, research and development and other general corporate purposes. The price to the public was $39.375 per share which is about 9 times the 1993 IPO price. Cree got a big starting boost from SDIO and Navy SBIRs in 1988 and should be the poster child for SBIR with its $600M market cap.

Cree Makes and Raises Money Cree Makes and Raises Money
(Jan 22) Cree Research (Durham, NC) filed to sell 1.3M shares which would raise $150M at today's stock price. The proceeds would go into the company for expansion of facilities, debt repayment, and R&D. Maybe it can share the development cost of more new technology with forward-looking government bureaus like BMDO. Cree also reported $2.9M profit for the quarter, up 94% on last year's quarter.

Cree Keeps Climbing Cree Keeps Climbing
(Dec 22) Cree Research (Durham, NC) keeps climbing, up another 10% yesterday. The other two prime SBIR examples are also climbing. SDL is quadruple its 1998 low and ATMI's stock price is recovering nicely from the Asian contagion up to triple its 1998 low but still a third below its high.

Cree $8M More
(Dec 18) Cree Research, Inc. (Durham, NC) the world's leading manufacturer and supplier of silicon carbide (SiC) wafers and SiC based semiconductor products said its got another $8M deal with Siemens for of Cree's conductive buffer (CB) light emitting diode (LED) of Cree's conductive buffer (CB) light emitting diode (LED). Return to Index

More Cree Land More Cree Land
(Dec 14) Cree Research is buying 80 acres near Research Triangle Park, possibly to expand its nearby manufacturing plant and headquarters. [RNO, Dec 11] With its market cap over $500M and its earnings growing at 20% a quarter, it can stand expansion. And says Max Yoder, the Navy's wide bandgap expert at Office of Naval Research, Investor Business Daily has rated Cree Research the best investment of any of the Semiconductor companies in America. Its stock has shot up from around $13 per share in early September to about $43 per share this week. Cree Research was essentially founded by ONR support at NCSU followed by ONR SBIR and BMDO/ONR SBIR support circa 1986 and has continued to be supported almost continuously thereafter. No, Max does not recommend Cree nor any other stock but he does know his bandgaps and most of the bandgap companies and academics. Not only is Max the Director of ONR's Electronics Division, he is also one of the most credible experts reviewing BMDO's SBIR proposals. (Yes, there's a hint that one should not automatically equate being a government division head with being a credible SBIR reviewer. Some just don't get what SBIR is for.)

Cree & ATMI Rise Cree & ATMI Rise
(Nov 30) Cree Research and ATMI had happy stockholders last week as they rose 30% and 18%. The two are SBIR's best examples of what seed investment can do for new technology. Eventually the two could be competing in the silicon carbide market although SiC is a small part of ATMI's market strategy. Even with the rise, though, ATMI is still half its high which it is not likley to recover until the semiconductor industry recovers from its overcapacity. Given a seemingly infinite demand for semiconductors, the industry tries to supply even more. National governments everywhere wanted in on the jobs and profits enough to destroy the ride for everyone. US computers buyers reap the benefits.

SiC Rocket
(Nov 24) Cree Research rocketed 29% to a new all-time high market cap of $500M. That's triple its Sep 1 value. Last week Cree said it was shipping Solid State White Light as an adjunct to its blue LEDs. The market likes the growth rates of something like 20% per quarter since late 1996. Cree got 30% of its starting money from three SBIR contracts (two BMDO and one AF) in 1988. If BMDO had taken an equity position at the time (no, the government doesn't do that) the US Treasury would be about $150M richer (in unrealized profit, mind you). No other SBIR company (I think) can make such a claim. If the others tried to measure their SBIR success by such a number, SBIR would be a much more sensible program for technology development. (No, don't worry; the federal agencies aren't interested anyway in getting themselves measured that way.)

The 50% rise in a week of Cree Research, an efficient SBIR user, coincided with the news that profits doubled over the same quarter last year to $2.3M. It also coincided with a general upswing in battered small company stocks.

More Siemens for Cree
(Sep 14) Cree Research (Durham, NC) said that Siemens A.G. enlarged its buying of existing and new LED products to the level that will be a third of Cree's 1999 product revenue. Siemens to also plans to purchase certain quantities of SiC wafers for use in manufacturing LEDs under license from Cree. Cree president and CEO Neal Hunter stated, "Cree has a proprietary process that provides us with the world's lowest cost platform for producing blue and green LEDs. [PRNewswire, Sep 10] If you want to be an SBIR materials house, you should compare yourself to Cree which when it started in 1988 was just another materials applicant. If you can make a good case for being another Cree you should propose to BMDO (who watches such things); if not, apply to the DOD military services or NSF who are a lot more likely to buy your future fiction.

Cree Made $6.3M
(Jul 30) Cree Research (Durham, NC) reported a profit of $6.3M for the year on $42M in sales. The market wasn't impressed and the stock price dove 12% (temporarily of course). Meanwhile, the commercial outlet for one Cree product - artificial diamonds by C3 Inc- said it was moving out of being an R&D company as it had sales of $240K for the quarter.

Cree $3M Deal
(Jul 17) Cree Research and Japan's Kansai Electric Power agreed to develop silicon carbide power-transmission devices for which Kansai will pay up to $3M in development during the next 32 months The devices will have with a blocking voltage in excess of five kilovolts for use in power-transmission systems. [Dow Jones, Jul 16]

Cree Very Short
(Jun 30)Number 6 on the list of shortest NASDAQ stocks in mid-June was Cree Research (Durham, NC). Short interest ration is the numbers of days of average trading volume to re-purchase all the stock sold short (borrowed and sold in anticipation of re-buying cheaper later). Technical analysts note that a large ratio means an large underlying demand for the stock since the borrowed stock must eventually be re-purchase and returned to its rightful owner. The last SBIR stock in such a position was Kopin (Taunton, MA).

Rising Demand, No Sales
(May 11) Even with the new crystal-growing equipment, C3 will be unable to meet demand for its product in 1999 and possibly in 2000, Hunter said. The company sometimes receives more than 500 calls a day expressing interest. .. It is scheduled to ship its first fake diamonds in June. ... C3, which went public in November, aims to sell its gems to working women through jewelry chains, independent jewelers, jewelry manufacturers and wholesalers in the U.S. and abroad. [Raleigh News & Observer, May 9] SBIR advocates should be jumping to take credit for this "wealth creation" because the early SBIR contributions to parent Cree Research helped get Cree started. Naysayers could argue that government ought not be subsidizing the jewelry industry. But the demand for the "rhinestone carbides" has helped steer capital into Cree where it will buttress the silicon carbide business for high-tech advances like blue lasers. What SBIR needs to justify its existence as more than a mere political handout is more Crees and fewer analysis and service contractors.

C3's First Revenues C3's First Revenues
(May 4) C3 Inc (Morrisville, NC) got its first revenues $250K for testers so that jewelers can tell real diamonds from C3's fakes. [Raleigh News & Observer, May 1] What a great game: counterfeit something and then make your money selling a way to detect the counterfeit. Anyway, it's a commercialization route for Cree Research's (Durham, NC) silicon carbide technology.

Cree Profits
(Apr 16) Cree Research (Durham, NC) made $1.75M (five times the same quarter last year) for the quarter and revenues of $10.7M. Blue LEDs and SiC products. Cree has had $4.7M of DOD SBIR for its SiC things. It may pay enough taxes this year to pay back ALL the SBIR awards, a standard the government might consider for high-multiple winners.

The commercial launch of C3's fake diamonds, expected by the end of June, will be limited to smaller gemstones measuring one-half carat or less while the company's supplier works out the kinks of producing larger stones. [Raleigh News-Observer, Feb 27] The rhinestone carbide grew from Cree Research's silicon carbide technology fostered in its infancy by SBIR.

Cree Makes $1.4M
(Jan 19) Cree Research (Durham, NC) made $1.4M in the latest quarter on sales of $10M. Sales for the half-year were also up by half. Cree makes a great SBIR story; got enough SBIR to help product development but not enough to depend on nor to grow on. Cree, however, should watch over its shoulder for SBIR-helped infant companies like Sterling Semiconductor (Loudon Co, VA), which has dipped a big drink out of BMDO's Fast Track well for ultrahigh quality bulk silicon carbide and improved economics for SiC growth. Whichever company wins, SBIR wins and the industry gets healthy competition. Return to Index

A Little Less Cree
(Dec 17) Vinik sold 145,400 shares in Cree, reducing its stake to 7.4%. Critics maintain that Vinik trades on his notoriety by investing in a stock, driving its price up, and then bailing out with a tidy profit. But Cree's stock has actually been falling since Vinik's group made its investment public. The shares dropped 41% since they reached a 52-week high on Nov6. [Raleigh News-Observer, Dec 16]Return to Index

Cree Keeps German Customer
(Dec 12) Cree Research is reinforcing the foundation of its growing revenue by extending a key contract with its biggest customer, industrial giant Siemens A.G. Cree expects to sell more than $12 million in blue light-emitting diodes to Siemens in the next 12 months. Siemens uses the blue LEDs in a system for illuminating automobile dashboards. Siemens's $12M is 41% of last year's revenue. Analysts, however, expect Cree's revenues to jump this to $46.1M. [Raleigh News Observer, Dec 11] The NASDAQ worries, though, over Asia-dive cut Cree's price yesterday by 10%. Most SBIR firms and government SBIR overseers, don't worry, you'll never have such opportunities to live in the fishbowl of a public firm.

Hedge Fund Finds Cree
(Dec 4) An investment group headed by former Fidelity Magellan Fund manager Jeffrey Vinik raised its stake in Cree Research to 8.5% of the laser technology developer's outstanding common shares, according to a filing with the SEC. Cree shares rose $1 to $24 Tuesday.[ Raleigh News-Observer, Dec 3] Love those blue gagdets! How many other SBIR funded companies has Vinik invested in, do you think? No, hedgers don't "invest" in a company; they bet on stock movements.

More money was raised in IPOs in November - nearly $8B - than in any previous month. [WSJ, Dec 3] What problem, then, is SBIR solving?

Cree Expanding
(Nov 24) Cree Research (Durham, NC) paid $3M for a 30-acre site, which includes a 145,000-square-foot plant and a 35,000-square-foot warehouse. Cree plans to consolidate all its operations at the site over the next two years and plans to invest $6 million to $7 million in the plant. It has entered into a $10 million loan agreement with NationsBank to finance the purchase and capital improvements. [Raleigh Observer News, Nov 22]. Such expansion should alert the Army's SBIR to the kind of company that will provide for the Army's future without continual feeding like most Army SBIR companies are expecting and will do little good without.

Blue-Blood Cree
(Nov 6) With all the blood shed in last week's market ride, Cree Research makes a new high and high and high. It's up to $29, triple its low for the last 12 months, a market cap of $350M, and within 10% of its all time 1995 high. Market prospects for blue lasers must be looking up again.Return to Index

Cree Rising
(Oct 13) Cree Research stock has jumped 31% in the past week thanks to the raised profile of its exclusive supply agreement with C3 developing a new diamond substitute. The supply agreement -- and its revenue potential for Cree - has assumed more visibility since C3 announced plans to go public last week. C3 was founded by Eric Hunter, co-founder and Cree's former CEO. However, C3 is a small start-up that was pretty much an unknown quantity in the investment community before it filed a registration statement with the SEC on Sept. 30. C3 hopes to $30M worth of stock to the public in mid-November. It intends to use Cree's silicon carbide to produce a synthetic, clear gemstone that C3 touts as being superior to cubic zirconia and nearly indistinguishable from diamond. Cree posted a profit of $3.5 million in the fiscal year ended June 30, up from a mere $242,000 the prior year. Annual revenue, meanwhile, jumped from $15 million to $29 million. [Raleigh Observer Oct 10] Cree is one well-touted SBIR success, first funded in 1988, IPO in 1993, growing line of bleeding-edge SiC products, a perfect example of SBIR's claiming high credit for what would have happened anyway. Those six NC State guys had the stuff. For the SBIR advocates, each Cree justifies a thousand awards to companies specializing in serving the federal agency.

Buoyed by growing sales and promising research projects, Cree Research [Durham, NC} Inc. expects to invest tens of millions of dollars in the next few years in a new manufacturing/research and development facility. The 205-employee company with 55,000 square feet [will be]. moving to a site with at least twice as much space -- and with room for further expansion ... Cree develops light-emitting diodes used in electronic message signs and as indicator lights in, for example, automobile dashboards. Cree also hopes to parlay its expertise in silicon carbide-based semiconductors into a wide array of lucrative new ventures, including a blue laser that would replace the infrared lasers used in CD players and for storing data in personal computers. CEO Hunter said. "Just for the blue laser alone, if that takes off, there's another 100,000 square feet you would need." [DAVID RANII, Raleigh News & Observer, Aug 13] Cree will find land easier to buy than high-tech workers. Cree is an SBIR success story.

Two Inches Now, Three Later
(Sep 3) You can now buy a few two-inch wafers of silicon carbide from Cree Research (Durham, NC) and someday not too long three-inch wafers. Cree, one of the great SBIR stories from 1988, demonstrated the three-inch in Stockholm. The press release includes attaboys from the DARPA program manager (with good government precise language like "especially critical" and "tremendous") that has put real money into Cree's continuing SiC development. SDIO (now BMDO) put in the first money as SBIR was meant to do.

Like A Rhinestone Carbide
(Aug 1) If making silicon carbide substrates for blue lasers is too tough a problem for a present cash cow, how about baubles? Cree Research (Durham, NC) has made a $12M deal with C3 Inc to sell moissanite as faux diamond. After all, silicon carbide has a form that looks so like diamond that only a jeweler can tell. Will government trumpet the result as a triumph for SBIR even though it is not the high-minded enriching result government says it seeks? Never mind that the role of jewelry in storing and displaying wealth has ceded its place to mobile phones. Such spinoffs destroy more wealth than they create because except for buying land from unsuspecting natives, baubles have no feed-through value. They enable no new technologies and they substitute a cheap good for a rare good. For Cree it does breathe life into a struggle for value in silicon carbide semiconductors. The market liked the new deal enough to drive Cree's stock to a 52-week high. Return to Index

Cree's Footnote
(Aug 6) Although Cree Research reported $3M profit for the year in profit, the footnote says that $2.1M is non-recurring, as was $1.4M the year before. How long does a string of non-recurring items have to be to make it a recurring source of profit (loss)? The ploy is usually abused by corporations to disguise losses.

Cree Turns a Nice Profit
(Aug 5) Cree Research (Durham, NC) made $700K in the quarter after selling 234% more blue LEDs. A lot better result than the $1M lost in last year's quarter.

Cree's Blue Laser Goes Continuous
(Jul30) Cree Resaerch (Durham., NC) said its blue laser ran continuously (not pulsing) for the demonstrably long time of one microsecond. Recently, the laser ran for an hour in pulsing mode. Running in short pulsing lets the thing cool down while it waits for the next pulse. Return to Index

Cree's In Play in Korea
(Jun26) Cree Research (Durham, NC) got an order for 800 real color module products from Rainbow Vision, a Korean firm which plans to use the full color LEDs for a live action replay board for a new sports arena. [Dow Jones Newswire] Return to Index

A Blue Hour for Cree
(Jun 23) Cree's blue laser lasted an hour, with only 9,999 more hours to go. Cree Research (Durham, NC). If some system questions can be worked out, and blue lasers extrapolate neatly from today's red lasers, blue could quadruple storage on a CD-ROM. Return to Index

Cree Announces Blue Laser
(Jun 10) Cree Research (Durham, NC) announced a room-temperature blue GaN-on-SiC laser, the dream of dozens of SBIR hopefuls dabbling in both GaN and SiC materials. Unlike most of the dabblers, though, Cree is market-driven, not science-driven, what SBIR is supposed to foster. Cree credits financial support from DARPA, which takes on high-risk, high-payoff stuff. Cree should also credit the SBIRs it got from several places including BMDO when Cree first started as a company. Don't rush out to the corner electronics store just yet. More work remains. Return to Index

Cree to Sell Fewer Holes
(Jun 17) Cree Research (Durham, NC) will heretofore sell 40% fewer holes. It will sell its silicon carbide wafers with micropipe densities graded in three groups: the new best grade will have only 30 per cmsq (a 40% reduction), the next best 31-100 per cmsq, and the coarsest will have 101-200 per cmsq (a 50% reduction). The Holy Grail is still Zero Micropipes per wafer which would make SiC an odds-on candidate for higher power uses like lasers and power electronics. Companies like Sterling Semiconductor (Reston, VA) are taking SBIR money to hunt for the Zeros. Return to Index

Cree Reports Profit (May 8) Cree Research (Durham, NC) reported $550K profit for the first quarter. BUT $500K came from a license fee despite a doubling of product revenue from shipments of LEDs to dominant customer Siemens. Whether investors like that depends on whether they think Cree is a production company or a licensing company. Cree does note that a "substantial portion" of its lifetime revenues have come from government R&D contracts and customers' evaluation purchases. On balance, despite its market struggles, Cree is one of SBIR's better investments although a howling success will not come until the marketplace accepts Cree's quality of LED. It did what SBIR was intended to do for a start-up with a potentially competitive new technology -- get it started. Note the qualifier "potentially competitive". Therein hangs the tale of most SBIR mediocrity, the unwillingness of government to discern what is potentially competitive from what is merely service to the agency's menu-du-jour. But then agencies understand their immediate menu and are ill-placed to judge "potentially competitive". Return to Index

Cree Makes Real Profit (Jan 30) Cree Research reports $358K profit for the quarter which is both down and up from the same quarter last year. That quarter included a juicy one-time license fee.(the whole business of separating one-time from recurring revenues and profits makes a bonanza for accountants and lawyers.) Cree attributes the winning results to zooming sales of LEDs, up 500% over last year, by the self-proclaimed world leader in the development of silicon carbide based semiconductors. SBIR analysts should recognize that the government's investment in Cree is one of the too few examples of SBIR's doing what Congress thought SBIR should do - start a new technology that can transition to world competition. Cree did what too few SBIR awardees do - risk itself in the marketplace with private capital backing. Instead, many too many companies bleat how they can use SBIR to produce what the government wants, but stop developing when the grant runs out for a whole panoply of rationalizations. The process flourishes because the symbiosis serves both parasitic companies and market-indifferent agencies. . Return to Index

Cree Rising (Jan 24) Cree Research stock up 50% in three weeks.

We hate to be a party pooper, but hasn't anyone noticed that the computer industry's sales growth in 1996 was half the rate of 1995, ad that earnings in 1996 were below 1995? G Morgenson, Forbes, Jan 27

Cree Lerached
The strike suit hits Cree Research (Durham, NC). After Cree said it would produce six million LEDs in the spring quarter, insiders sold $3.7M of their stock as the stock rose from $14 to $20. The suit against Cree alleges that the insiders knew all too well that production problems would lower quality and thus sales. That, say the plaintiffs, violates the SEC Act. Actual production for the quarters was three million LEDs. Yesterday, the stock was back down to the $10 range. Who are the plaintiffs? Californians would recognize them - the exploiters of the Lerach strike suit tactic. The law firm representing the plaintiffs is the well-known Lerach firm against whom the opponents of California Prop 211 rage. Those opponents have raised a lot of money and prominent names to defeat 211 next week. A Wall Street Journal op-ed piece today predicts a big stock market fall if 211 wins approval. The problem of insider manipulation is as old as stocks because the money to be made from superior knowledge puts too large a strain on moral restraints. Return to Index

Cree Makes A Non-Recurring(?) Profit
With revenues more than doubling for the quarter, Cree Research turned a tidy $1.9M profit thanks to a $2.4 license fee. In the fine print it says it would have posted a small loss but for the one-time items. [American corporate accounting seems to teem with one-time entries that obscure a long range view of management.] In a statement that defies Prop 211 Cree projected that the DH-85 blue LED would be the 199 revenue driver. [In your face, says Cree to Bill Lerach and the strike suit lawyers.] In another note, Cree said it closed its Eastern European Division in Russia. Return to Index

Two More Cree Licenses
Shin-Etsu Handotai Co and Sumitomo ponied up $2.7M for licenses to get Cree Research's silicon carbide process for light emitting diodes. Cree will still supply the bare SiC wafers from its proprietary Carolina home. Return to Index

Cree Taps Government and Grows 52 Percent.
Three contracts worth $3.9M combined will flow into Cree Research (Durham, NC) for more silicon carbide improvement to get to "world-class high-power and high-frequency transistors" . The big contract, $2.4M (plus $0.4M sharing) from DARPA seeks a 100 watt microwave amplifier built around high-power transistors. When you're a Cree you grab every morning's paper (remember print media?) to see what new blue product has been announced by Nichia Chemical (Japan). The press release also said that Cree's 1996 revenues grew 52 percent over 1995 with a net income of $243K. Return to Index

Blue Laser, Bluer Hunters
The hunt is still on but American blue laser hunters may be behind again. Toshiba announced a "more advanced version" of Nichia Chemical Industries's GaN-based laser, saysThe Economist (Sep 21). BMDO supported a bunch of American small hunters with SBIR including Cree Research (Durham, NC) whose CEO is named Hunter. They're all after what HP estimates is a $2B market in blue LEDs and even more for blue lasers. Other known GaN hunters are Advanced Technology Materials (Danbury, CT), Linares Management Associates (Medfield, MA), APA Optics (Blaine, MN), Astralux (Boulder, CO), and EMCORE .(Somerset, NJ). Return to Index

Cree-ping Up on GaN Business
At least $5M worth light emitting diodes (LED)of gallium nitride on silicon carbide will flow from Cree Research (Durham, NC) to Siemens, the German electronics giant. Cree will add a production reactor and Siemens will devote scientists to understanding the process (should Cree want its giant partner to know a lot about the product?). Cree got started in SiC in the late 80s with a substantial contribution from (then) SDIO's SBIR. Return to Index

Cree Profits
Out of the year's $16.8M revenues ,Cree Research eked a $0.44M profit despite a 4th quarter loss. It shipped 3 million LEDs (presumably all blue) in the 4th quarter but couldn't get cost down to selling price. (Lost a little on every item but made up for it in volume?) Cree makes a good SBIR model because it used SBIR as only a part of a larger and realistic strategy for exploiting silicon carbide electronics at North Carolina State University. Return to Index

More Blue Money
Cree Research and Philips share a new DARPA contract for $5.2M to keep developing the GaN on SiC hope for blue LEDs and blue lasers. The pair will add $1M of their own money and are still spending the $8M from a previous DARPA contract $4M of which is private money. Good for start-up Cree but questionable as corporate welfare for world Dutch giant Philips. And if the DOD is going heavily into such investment sharing, why not bring back the pioneer DARPA Director Fields who got sacked for starting it in a Republican administration.

CryoCor

CryoCor (no SBIR) rocketed upward when the FDA advisory board blessed its scheme of freezing cold to treat some abnormal heart rhythms. The doubling Thursday put it back where it was Monday before the FDA issued a bad advisory for the long term benefit of the scheme.

Crystal IS (Watervliet, NY)

In contrast to a life-style company Crystal IS (Green Island, NY; $2.5M SBIR plus $4M ATP) currently is seeking another $10 million to commercialize its LEDs, ... The company is funded with $15.7 million from ARCH Venture Partners, 3i, Lux Capital, Harris and Harris, Credit Suisse and a few other smaller firms. [The Business Review (Albany), Sep 26, 08] Crystal IS started in the RPI Incubator with a $1M 1999 Phase 2 SBIR from MDA, which in those days didn't tolerate life-style companies.

Crystal IS (Green Island, NY; $2M SBIR+ $2M ATP) won a $1M DOE grant to develop its light-emitting diode business. ... makes a substrate [AlN] that it says is particularly good for making LEDs ... founder Leo Schowalter (RPI Physics prof) said the DOE money will help the company enter the so-called solid state lighting industry that includes LEDs, which he pegged at $14 billion a year. ... employs 26 people, but expects to expand its facilities by next year ... The company has received tens of millions of dollars in venture and government funding in the past two years alone. [Larry Rulison, Albany Times-Union, May 6, 08]

Researchers at Rensselaer Poly and semiconductor maker Crystal IS (Green Island, NY) created a multilayered, porous coating that eases the transition as light moves from the air into a solid material or into the air from a semiconductor in an LED. Each layer is made of nanorods grown at a precise angle. [MIT Tech Review, M/J07] Crystal IS, founded by the RPI's Physics Dept chair, had $2M SBIR for AlN substrates.

Crystal IS (Watervliet NY) which is developing aluminum nitride substrates for use in a variety of electronic devices, has received $10.6M venture capital. Josh Wolfe, the lead VC said the company has a winning combination of patented processes, proprietary materials, high-value end markets and the team to execute. [Larry Rulison, Albany Times Union, Sep 1] Crystal IS got its first SBIR Phase II to develop AlN substrates for III-nitride epitaxy from (you guessed it) BMDO's Jeff Bond in 1999, back when commercial potential mattered at MDA.

Crystal IS www.crystal-is.com (Watervliet, NY) says it is the market leader in the commercialization of native single-crystal aluminum nitride (AlN) substrates for the cost-effective production of high performance electronic and optoelectronic semiconductor devices such as high power radio frequency transistors and ultraviolet lasers and light emitting diodes. Leo Schowalter's company has had 13 DOD SBIRs including two Phase 2. Its first big hit was $1M from MDA.

Yankees Meet Dixie. Crystal IS (Watervliet, NY) did a non-exclusive patent license agreement with most favored status with Cree on Crystal's ultra-low defect density native aluminum nitride (AlN) single crystal substrates. Where did Crystal get a chunk of early development money? BMDO SBIR in its "ROI matters" days of Jeff Bond, and then two Navy awards.

Crystal IS (Latham, NY) got a $2M grant from ATP to continue its development of 2-inch diameter, crack-free, optically transparent, semi-insulating, native single-crystal AlN boules and substrates. It is contributing another $1.1M from private sources as demanded by the NIST cost-sharing model. But with a more Republican Congress, a runaway deficit, and a lame duck president, perhaps ATP will finally bite the dust as thinly disguised corporate welfare of government subsidy for commercial products. Crystal was one of 32 awards including Cree. Also winning: Dow, Siemens, Corning, and Sarnoff.

Meanwhile, another company is on the prowl for Picolight-like success. Crystal IS (Watervliet, NY, my home town) has chalked up an impressive doubling in diameter size of their heavily DoD backed native nitride substrate development., says Compound Semiconductor News, Sep 22. President, co-founder, CEO Leo Schowalter (who also heads the Physics Department at RPI (my alma mater) across the Hudson) credits DOD SBIR for early money and even credits synergetic programs among DARPA, MDA, AF, and Navy. In technical ways the departments are synergetic because, despite their bureaucratic tussles for money, the technical people in the trenches review and inhabit each others' technical oversight of programs and companies. If you can get one of those technical guys excited about your idea, they will spread the word among the other DOD agencies. That good news os offset by their being hard to convince that your idea is anything that great. They do, after all, see the best ideas from all over the country in universities and companies. Sometimes you have to compete with smart innovators like Leo who exploits university research into entrepreneurial products. Crystal IS claims to be the market leader in the commercialization of single-crystal aluminum nitride (AlN) substrates for the cost-effective production of high power, high temperature, and optoelectronic devices such as blue and ultraviolet lasers.

Crystallume

Crystallume, Chapter 3. Not only is Crystallume alive and well, there are two such Crystallumes under the same aegis. Ed Francis, VP Imagineering, of the most direct successor to Tom Schultz's original VC-backed company, clarifies it thus: Crystallume PVD www.crystallumepvd.com was spun off from Crystallume Engineered Diamond ( www.crystallume.com ) as a separate company to specialize in PVD coating service. Crystallume Engineered Damond is the largest CVD diamond facility in North America running nine CVD diamond chambers 24/7. The Santa Clara facility grows diamond film for industrial and semiconductor applications. For more information check out the website www.crystallume.com ) for patents, white papers and completed research in the technical section. Crystallume continues to apply its 20 plus years of diamond research to new diamond applications. Which means that the SBIR investments in the 1980s eventually paid off in measurable commercial activity. Now, if SBIR econometrics could just shark up some systematic way to capture such economics ans show one way or the other whether SBIR was better or worse than doing nothing but allowing capitalism to create wealth.

Crystallume alive and well. A recent note suggested that Crystallume http://www.crystallumepvd.com/index.html had died. Not so. Although the SBIR company that spent a lot of SBIR in the 80s to develop CVD diamond electronics found the product too expensive for commercial tastes, another company bought it and shifted the business focus to PVD diamond coatings for tooling. Thus the new enterprise Crystallume PVD says Crystallume has become the world leader in this area, especially when good uniformity and tight tolerances are required. Sorry for any confusion.

CSA Engineering ((Mountain View, CA)

Moog will buy CSA Engineering (Mountain View, CA; $28M SBIR) for $14.8M ... The company makes systems for vibration suppression, precision motion control and dynamic testing of structures for the space, defense, aircraft and industrial markets. Sales in the most recent year were $14 M. [Buffalo (NY) Business First, May 2] If you had invested $28 in a company's R&D over two decades for a minor equity share, would you be happy to get your share of a selling price of $15? Would you be consoled by the happy thought that you had paid for a lot of jobs? If SBIR offered shares to the public as a venture fund, would you buy some? Maybe you don't yet understand why set-aside programs make such "investments".

CS-Keys

CS-Keys, (Indianapolis, IN; no SBIR) startup developing a new method for the early detection of cancer, is expected to announce today that it has received $6.25 million in funding [Indianapolis Star, Jan 29, 08]

Cubist Pharmaceuticals (Lexington, MA)

Cubist Pharmaceuticals filed a patent infringement lawsuit against [Israel's] Teva Parenteral Medicines, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc. and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.
TPM is looking for approval of its Abbreviated New Drug Application (ANDA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for a generic version of daptomycin, sold as Cubicin (daptomycin for injection) by Cubist, before the Lexington biotech�s patent rights expired. [Mass High Tech, Mar 24, 09]

Cubist Pharmaceuticals fell 15% as a unit of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries informed Cubist it will be seeking approval for a generic version of Cubist's antibiotic Cubicin. [Wall Street Journal, Feb 11]

FORMA Therapeutics (Cambridge, MA; no SBIR) said that it has signed a collaboration agreement with Cubist Pharmaceuticals to leverage [whatever that means] FORMA's chemistry platform to discover novel antibacterial compounds for development by Cubist. [Chris Reidy, Boston Globe, Jan 27, 09]

Two local life sciences companies are teaming up to work on a collaboration to commercialize some RNAi therapeutics that could potentially yield one of the companies just over $100 million in up-front and milestone payments. Cubist Pharmaceuticals and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals announced that they have formed a strategic collaboration to develop and commercialize Alnylam's ALN-RSV program; the RSV-specific RNAi therapeutic program includes ALN-RSV01, which is currently in Phase II clinical development for the treatment of respiratory syncytial virus infection in adult lung transplant patients, the two companies said in a press release. [Boston Globe, Jan 9, 09]

New highs made by Cubist Pharma and Osiris Therapeutics [Dec 2, 08]

Cubist Pharmaceuticals opened its new 35,000-square-foot research facility at the company�s biopharmaceutical headquarters in Lexington. The facility, constructed of environmentally friendly materials, adds enough lab space to fit an additional 100 people, officials said. [Mass High Tech, Sep 30, 08]

Since Cubist Pharmaceuticals launched its first drug five years ago - an antibiotic called Cubicin - sales have skyrocketed. ... This year alone, the Lexington biotech company expects Cubicin to generate $395 million to $405 million in sales nationwide, up more than one-quarter from 2007. And executives predict that US sales could climb to $750 million within the next few years. Domestic sales have been so strong that the company next month will add 187,000 square feet to its Lexington headquarters. But sales have been tepid elsewhere in the world. [Boston Globe, Aug 19, 08]

Under an exclusive agreement, Cubist Pharmaceuticals will provide sales and promotion of AstraZeneca's broad spectrum antibiotic Merrem I.V. in the U.S. for a guaranteed $20 million annually. [Mass High Tech, Jul 2, 08]

Cubist Pharmaceuticals said first-quarter profit more than tripled, helped by higher demand for its products in the USA. Cubist markets Cubicin, an antibiotic used to treat bacterial infections of the skin. [Boston Globe, Apr 18, 08]

Cubist Pharmaceuticals said it has warned the Food and Drug Administration that one of its antibiotic drugs, Cubicin, has been tainted with a potentially harmful industrial chemical. [Wall Street Journal, Apr 10, 08]

Cubist Pharmaceuticals (Lexington, MA; $5M+ SBIR) lowered its previously reported fourth-quarter earnings to reflect a hefty acquisition charge [relating to buying] Illumigen Biosciences (Seattle, WA; $2M SBIR). [Boston Globe, Feb 13, 08]

Cubist Pharmaceuticals ($4M SBIR) repurchased $50M worth of notes through private transactions. [Boston Globe, Feb 8, 08]

Cubist Pharmaceuticals (Lexington, MA; $5+M SBIR) bought Illumigen Biosciences (Seattle,, WA; $2M SBIR) for $9M cash and planned milestone payments. Cubist, of , will make up to $75M in development payments for Illumigen�s lead product, IB657, now aimed at treating hepatitis C. Development of the compound for other uses could trigger payments of up to $117M. [Boston Globe, Dec 27]

The SBIR advocate's nice Website lauds Cubist Pharmaceuticals (Cambridge, MA) as Solidly involved in SBIR since 1995 and having a zooming stoxk price. Cubist says it is raising another $125M to cover the costs of clinical trials and commercialzation of daptomycin in the EDGE (TM) (Evaluation of Daptomycin in Gram-positive Entities). ... Cubist has in place-strategic partnerships with Novartis Pharma AG, Merck & Co., Inc. and Bristol-Myers Squibb and has formed biotechnology alliances with Phylos, Inc., Cetek, Coelacanth,and Neurogen Corporation. She notes that the stock price has been between 3 and 71 this year. What is SBIR's role in Cubist which has lost $35M cumulative since 1992 plus revenues of $11M. It went public in 1996. The stock dribbled along until late 1999 when it shot up from 10 to 70 as, After a quiet year in 1999, biotech stocks have exploded out of the starting gate in 2000, says Mary Weil of Dow Jones .... "I've never seen anything like this, and I've seen a lot of wacky things," says Phil Goldstein of Opportunity Partners. "The phrase 'life science' has captured people's attention The sshare sale at the astronomical price wll dilute the present shareholders and add to the cumulative capital loss. Who knows how long the investors will go along? They have supported Irvine Sensors for a decade of big losses. The company said that Phase 2 clinical trial data showed daptomycin, administered once-a-day at 4 milligrams per kilogram, has a 91% clinical success rate. SBA's publicly available database (which some observers say is quite inaccurate) says that Cubist has had about $1.6M of SBIR in the mid 90s. Which raises the question whether SBIR is causing the growth or riding on it. The SBIR money is both late and small and therefore likely to be merely reducing the cost of capital while the company adds one more brick to the temple it is building. Why does a company that can raise the kind of capital that Cubist is raising need a seed investment from a nursery government program? What is NIH doing with its SBIR besides incremental additions to research that will get funded by the private sector in huge amounts anyway?
One healthy approach to SBIR in public firms is to limit SBIR to the highest risk portion of wholly new technology that cannot attract private financing because, and only because, it is too technically uncertain for ROI calculation. Any other apporach is merely distorting private finance, a role government should be avoiding, unless you are a screaming liberal who believes that government should be organizing society including the private sector's allocation of capital.

CuraGen

Celldex Therapeutics (no SBIR) said it has agreed to buy CuraGen in a transaction that values CuraGen at $94.5 million. [Boston Globe, May 29, 09]

Drug developer CuraGen continues to cut expenses and consider selling itself as the firm prepares to release new data about the performance of its most advanced cancer drug. ... has yet to bring a drug to market, said it had a net loss of $1.5 million for the quarter ended March 31, down from $6.8 million a year earlier, and operating expenses of $3.6 million, down from $7.1 million. CuraGen had no revenue, but said it ended the quarter with $80 million in cash and investments. [Hartford Courant, Apr 28, 09]

CuraGen reports it is evaluating �strategic initiatives� to make more money for its shareholders, including possibly selling the company [Mass High Tech, Feb 18, 09]

CuraGen reports it has regained compliance on the Nasdaq Global Market with its higher share price [Mass High Tech, May 30]

CuraGen has been warned by NASDAQ for being below the buck. [Mass High Tech, Jan 30, 08]

CuraGen and its Danish partner TopoTarget A/S have begun patient dosing in a Phase 1/2 clinical trial evaluating PXD101, a small molecule compound, for the treatment of inoperable hepatocellular cancer [Mass High Tech, Jul 14, 06]

The FDA gave CuraGen an orphan drug designation for its treatment of radiation induced oral mucositis (OM). An orphan drug is one that would cure less than 200K patients

CuraGen added a board member with 37 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry as chief scientific officer and senior vice president of Warner-Lambert. [Mass High Tech, Jan 7]

CVRx (Maple Grove, MN)

CV Therapeutics (Palo Alto, CA)

The CEO and CFO of CV Thera sold $12M worth of shares. [Wall Street Journal, Apr 11, 09]

CV Thera up 13% [Mar 12, 09]

CV Therapeutics up 36% [Jan 27, 09] after Astellas Pharma made a nearly $1 billion unsolicited takeover offer [WSJ, Jan 28]

CV Thera up 10% [Jan 21, 09]

CV Thera up 15% [Jan 15, 09]

Hit the Jackpot. CV Therapeutics just got a nice reward after winning federal approval last week for Lexiscan, a drug it developed to help doctors identify patients with heart ailments. TPG-Axon Capital, a New York hedge fund, has agreed to pay the Palo Alto biotechnology company $175 million in exchange for half the sales royalties CV Therapeutics gets from its partner, Astellas Pharma of Tokyo, which will market the product. CV Therapeutics also said in a news release it could receive $10 million more from TPG-Axon if certain unspecified goals are met in connection with the drug. Plus, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval of the drug entitled CV Therapeutics to a $12 million goal-reaching payment from Astellas. Lexiscan is designed for patients unable to exercise on treadmills to generate the increased blood flow needed for doctors to check them for coronary artery disease. The drug mimics the effect of exercise by temporarily increasing blood flow. [San Jose Mercury News, Apr 16]

CV Therapeutics up 13% [Mar 12, 08]

CV Therapeutics (Palo Alto, CA; one SBIR) down 20% ; posted a fourth-quarter loss that exceeded Wall Street forecasts. [Wall Street Journal, Feb 28]

CV Therapeutics up 12% [Aug 8, 07]

CV Therapeutics up 11% after filing an application for a drug to be used in heart stress tests. [May 16, 07]

CV Therapeutics (one small SBIR) fell 24%, after reporting that a heart-condition drug failed to meet its efficacy goal in a trial.

CyberKey Solutions

Federal authorities have accused the CEO of CyberKey Solutions Inc. of St. George (UT) of defrauding investors by selling unregistered stock and falsely claiming the company had a $25M purchase order from the Department of Homeland Security. [Salt Lake Tribune, Mar 21] No SBIR

Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems

Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems-- whose device to treat victims of spinal-cord injuries was developed at Purdue University and researched at Indiana University -- serves as a reminder that creating such ventures is a tough and complicated task. ... is quickly running out of money and may have to shut down in the coming weeks, according to a company filing this week with securities regulators. [Indianapolis Star, Nov 6, 08]

NeuroMetrix Inc. and Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems report the two medical devices firms have formed a limited liability company to expand an existing joint venture to develop a product for peripheral nerve injury. [Mass High Tech, Feb 19, 08]

Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems says the FDA wants more information about its Humanitarian Device Exemption (HDE) marketing application for its nerve growth stimulator system for spinal injuries. The additional analyses and data request may delay HDE market approval until at least the first half of 2008 [Mass High Tech, Dec 11]

Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems asked the government for a humanitarian exemption to gain approval for its device to restore nerve function in patients with spinal cord injuries. [Mass High Tech, Feb 21] One Phase 2 SBIR in 2002.

CyberOptics (Golden Valley, MN)

CyberOptics up 10% [Jun 24, 08]

CyberOptics (Golden Valley, MN; $0.3M SBIR) said that it expects to begin a "Dutch Auction" tender offer within the next two weeks to buy a number of common stock shares not to exceed a total price of $15 million. [Minneapolis Star Tribune, Jun 23,08]

Cymbet (Elk River, MN)

Cymbet (Elk River, MN) got $16.5M in a second round of private-equity financing to scale up to large-scale commercial production of its "thin-film" technology for microscopic batteries. Said CEO Bill Priesmeyer, "The technology works .. with immediate applications and cost savings." The deal is one of the largest single VC deal for a Minnesota company this year. Cymbet founder Mark Jenson, a one-time Honeywell engineer, and his team have worked for several years to convert battery technology licensed from the federal government into what Cymbet calls its patented "Power Fab" manufacturing process. Nearly $6 million of the $16.5 million in funding was raised from affluent individuals [Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dec 21, 04] Cymbet does not show up on the SBIR radar. In Minneapolis, medical equipment innovations are right at home in the Medtronic neighborhood. Porter's cluster ideas tell why. And why politicians' putting SBIR money in the middle of agricultural landscapes in isolated companies has little chance of being anything more than a jobs handout.

Cynosure

Cynosure (Westford, MA; $3.3M SBIR) that specializes in aesthetic lasers and other aesthetic treatment systems, said it has reduced its worldwide headcount by 17%, which leaves the company with about 285 employees. [Chris Reidy, Boston Globe, Jan 15]

BioChemics (Danvers, MA; no SBIR) announced that it has signed a research collaboration agreement with Cynosure (Westford, MA; $3M SBIR) to evaluate the use of BCI's VALE based compositions in conjunction with light based aesthetic treatments. [Boston Globe, Sep 30]

Cynosure (Westford, MA; $3M SBIR), developer and manufacturer of light-based aesthetic treatment systems, announced the opening of its second sales office in the People's Republic of China. [Chris Reidy, Boston Globe, Jun 26]

Cynosure (Westford, MA; $3M SBIR) reported second-quarter revenues of $30M, up 66%. [Boston Globe, Aug 16,07]

Popping Fat Cells. Cynosure got FDA OK for its Smartlipo system, a laser procedure that disrupts fat cells and causes coagulation of the tissue leading to skin tightening. Four Phase 2 SBIRs in the 1990s. It now says it is a worldwide organization with four wholly owned international subsidiaries, a joint venture in China, 19 distributors, and installations in 64 countries. [company press release, Nov 9]

CytImmune (Rockville, MD)

The trick, then, is to concentrate the TNF in the tumour. That can be done surgically, by a procedure known as isolated limb perfusion. But this is complicated, and the treatment works only in about three-quarters of cases. CytImmune (Rockville, MD; $700K SBIR) hopes that its method will be simpler. It intends to use Aurimune as a way of delivering TNF to the tumour site, and only to the tumour site, by employing the �leaky wall� effect to get the particles to the right place. [The Economist, Nov 8, 08]

CytImmune (Rockville, MD; two SBIRs), which uses nanotechnology to target tumors with its PEGylated colloidal gold delivery system has totaled $14M from private investment and grant funding. [Muphen R. Whitney, Tech Journal South, Nov 2]

Cytometix

start-ups in the drug field within the Milwaukee 7 economic development region suggests another strategic direction for the regional economy. Those new ventures come as Concordia University of Wisconsin mounts an impressive campaign to build a new pharmacy school in southeastern Wisconsin, possibly in downtown Milwaukee. ... New ventures in the emerging drug-making concentration: MPP Group (no SBIR), a venture headed by serial entrepreneur Frank Langley that is building drugs aimed at alcoholism. James Cook, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researcher, developed the compounds. Neuro Amp (no SBIR), a spin-off from PhysioGenix (Wauwatosa, WI; $3M SBIR) that is aiming at diseases of the central nervous system and Alzheimer's. Promentis (no SBIR), a collaboration between Marquette University's David Baker and UWM researchers and former Schwarz Pharma managers who are targeting schizophrenia and central nervous system disorders. Cytometix (no SBIR) , a 2004 start-up headed by Lane Brostrom that is developing drugs for the treatment of pain and asthma. Endece (no SBIR), a 2006 Mequon start-up headed by James Yarger that is developing compounds for treating cancer, sepsis, learning and memory. [John Torinus, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jan 31, 09]

Cytori Therapeutics (San Diego, CA)

Cytori Therapeutics (San Diego, CA; 133 employees, no SBIR) has a novel twist on stem cells: Its Celution System extracts them from an adult's own fat tissue (the procedure takes an hour) and injects the cells into the same patient in a variety of medical situations, including reconstructive surgery and heart disease treatment. ... expects the Food & Drug Administration to O.K. the U.S. use by yearend [Gene Marcial, Business Week, Dec 3,07]

Cytyc (Marlborough MA)

While they haven't yet found a cure for cancer, Cytyc and Hologic are teaming up to show the power of prevention. The two companies announced in late May a combination to form what would be the country's largest company focused exclusively on advanced technology in the field of women's health. Hologic specializes in mammography and breast biopsy systems, while Cytyc's ThinPrep System is used to detect cervical cancer and other diseases. [Hoover's, Jun 19, 07]

Cytyc acquired Adiana (no SBIR) which develops female contraceptives for up to $215M. [Mass High Tech, Feb 26]

Cytyc (Marlborough MA), a diversified women's health company, is giving shareholders of Vision Systems Ltd. until Nov. 17 to accept its offer to buy the Australian medical device firm for $517M cash. [Mass High Tech, Oct 31] One Phase 2 1995. Now $3B market cap, in the S&P 400 Mid-Cap Index.

Dara BioSciences (Raleigh, NC)

Early drug safety results for Dara BioSciences' (Raleigh, NC; no SBIR) experimental diabetes medicine boosted the stock of the small drug development company about 12%. ... Dara's strategy is to license drugs that are discovered by others, develop them through the second phase of human tests and then sell the marketing rights. The company employs 10. [Raleigh News & Observer, Jul 11, 08]

DayStar (Halfmoon NY)

For all of 2008, DayStar reported a net loss of $26M [compared] to a net loss of $36M in 2007. [The Business Review (Albany), Mar 17, 09]

DayStar Technologies reported a deeper net loss for the third quarter than it had a year ago. .... a net loss of $6.7 million, [Business Review (Albany), Nov 14, 08]

DayStar down 14% broke the buck. [Nov 21, 08] Sic transit gloria energii.

DayStar up 11% [Oct 20, 08]

DayStar up 19% [Oct 13, 08]

Daystar up 10% [Aug 28, 08]

DayStar Technologies up 11% [May 13, 08]

DayStar up 12% [May 8, 08]

DayStar down 15% [Mar 7, 08]

DayStar up 15% [Feb 13, 08]

DayStar up 11% [Feb 11, 08]

DayStar down 10% [Jan 23, 08]

DayStar down 11% [Jan 17, 08]

DayStar down 11% [Jan 15, 08]

DayStar up 25%. [Dec 31, 07]

DayStar up 24% [Dec 26, 07]

DayStar down 15% [Nov 12, 07] on decline of solar stocks with oil prices.

DayStar up 11% [Nov 6, 07]

DayStar Technologies priced its public offering for $64M to repay in full $9.2M in debt and to engineer and manufacture a deposition tool. [AP, Oct 26, 07]

DayStar down 13% [Oct 24, 07]

Day Star up 10% [Oct 19, 07]

DayStar up 15% [Oct 15, 07]

DayStar up 12% [Sep 26, 07]

DayStar Technologies that a former research manager stole trade secrets in that right after being notified of his intended layoff as the company moved to California, the employee began sending "the first of over 1,000 e-mails to his personal e-mail accounts," which had sensitive company information, including confidential memos, summaries of experiments, research findings, copies of patent applications and studies. [Larry Rulison, Albany Times-Union, Sep 22]

DayStar up 28% [Sep 19,07]

DayStar said it will start planning in 20008 for a 100-megawatt solar-cell factory to be built in 2009. [Albany Times Union, Aug 12,07]

DayStar Technologies up 10%. [Aug 8, 07]

DayStar up 11% on announcement of new issue of shares. [Aug 6, 07]

DayStar down 10% [Jul 27, 07]

DayStar up 14% [Jul 13, 07]

DayStar up 31% [Jun 25, 07]

DayStar Technologies is scrambling for $25M in equity financing by the end of July as it abandons New York's $11M incentive to return to California and build a manufacturing site for thin-film solar cells. [Albany Times-Union, Jun 22] Gearing up for serious business and going public are not recreational diversions from doing SBIR for the government money. It takes serious money, serious adults, and serious attitudes.

DayStar shot up 24% [May 18, 07]

DayStar down 10% [May 15, 07] as it will move its headquarters back to [Santa Clara] California and cut 20 jobs locally [in Halfmoon NY] in a bid to survive. [Eric Anderson, Albany Times Union, May 16] New York State wants its incentive money back.

DayStar shot up 24% [Mar 14, 07]

DayStar Tech down 14% [Mar 5, 07]

DayStar up another 20% [Feb 26, 07]

DayStar Technologies up 11% [Feb 23, 07].

A local VC put up 10% of a $5M VC investment in DayStar by New York investors. Michael Dura is also on the board of Evident Tech, a Troy NY nanofirm. [Albany Times-Union, Jan 26, 07]

DayStar up another 16% [Jan 18, 07]. It announced a financial restructuring of a $15 M investment by a hedge fund and agreeing to sell $5 M in additional stock. [Larry Rulison, Albany Times-Union, Jan 20]

DayStar up 25% [Jan 17, 07]

Daystar exploded, up 52% [Jan 11, 07] without company news. The local paper reports only speculation, .Are there brighter days ahead for DayStar?

Rough Start. DayStar dropped 18% atop a 14% drop on the year's first trading day. [Jan 07]

A potential financing deal between DayStar Technologies and a New York investment firm appears to have fallen through. [Albany Times-Union, Dec 8] No $15M and a new CEO.

DayStar jumped 13% on news that its solar cell production is exceeding expectations. DayStar had one Phase 2 SBIR for $1M from MDA four years before it went public in 2004. From three employees for the SBIR, it has expanded to 50 employees although revenue is still tiny as it builds production capacity and loses a few million a year from private sector capital and $11M state handout to move to Halfmoon NY from California. Halfmoon is on the edge of the Capital District which has seen several other successful small high-tech firms some of whom benefitted from a relationship with Rensselaer Polytechnic. I'll confidently guess that the competition for SBIR in MDA induced DayStar into getting third party financing for commercialization as a condition of most of the Phase II million since there had been many life-style companies wanting to dabble risk-free in the photovoltaic chemistry that DayStar exploits. [Sep 06]

DayStar aims to manufacture a [CIGS solar] cell that is competitive on performance, cost and durability. [Albany Times Union, Aug 5] ... CIGS technology has an extensive 20+ year history and became commercially viable in part due to the leadership of [founder] Dr. Tuttle and his associates during his 11- year tenure at the DOE�s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. One DOD (MDA at the end of its decade of SBIR innovation) Phase 2 SBIR for $1M in 2000, three years after founding and with only three employees, in a technology that had been advancing incrementally for years. Now it has 79 employees as a public company since 2004, having accepted an $11.2M relocation package from NY State and moved the Company�s operations from California. MDA would do well to advertise its ROI for the early investment, but MDA is no longer inclined to look for, or even at, economic ROI.

DBS Energy

Grab Your Politician for Plus-Up. Smaller and more transparent earmarks of federal funds for favored domestic projects are returning after a one-year moratorium on the controversial practice. ... a bit less than 1% of total R&D appropriations (3% for DOD) ... The Senate Top 10, are mostly smaller states with senators in key committee chairmanships�Mississippi, New Mexico and Tennessee are at the top. ... search AAAS's new database of 2008 earmarks [AAAS Newsletter, Sep 07] But for small business, even 1% is a big honey pot. In the list (August version): Electro Energy (CT; SBIR), Ocean Power Technologies (OR, SBIR in NJ), DBS Energy CT, Eikos (MA; $8M+ SBIR), Cellular Bioengineering HI, Cerematec (UT; SBIR), Ramgen WA, Advanced Radar Technologies WY, Compact Membrane Systems (DE; $20M SBIR), SD Catalyst Group SD. Your story is that high-tech small business will create jobs, and they don't know whether your claim is valid or just wishful thinking. Like the federal mission agencies who then have to award and supervise the contract, they don't seem much to care.

DCL Medical Laboratories ((Indianapolis, IN)

DCL Medical Laboratories (Indianapolis, IN; no SBIR) plans to hire an additional 125 workers at its Northwestside complex, nearly doubling its local work force, to help it keep up with a brisk demand from doctors' offices, pharmaceutical companies and other customers. ... also plans to add 20,000 square feet of commercial lab space as part of a $4.7 million investment. [Indianapolis Star, May 8]

Deca-Medics (Columbus,OH)

SolidWorks (Concord, MA; no SBIR; a unit of (French) Dassault Syst�mes) focused on computer aided design, said that one of its customers used SolidWorks software in developing a belt that helps emergency responders administer more effective CPR chest compressions to cardiac arrest victims. What's more, the life belt from Deca-Medics (Columbus, OH; $1.1M SBIR) was deemed the winning design in the annual NASA Tech Briefs "Create the Future Design Contest," SolidWorks said. [Boston Globe, May 4, 09] Solid Works founded 1993, bought by Dassault 1997 for stock valued at $310 million. [company website]

Decision Biomarkers (Waltham, MA)

Decision Biomarkers (Waltham, MA; one SBIR) announced today the launch of the Avantra biomarker workstation, along with its Max Biochip 8-plex cytokine immunoassay. ... the first multiplexed immunoassay system that enables nonspecialized technicians to perform complex protein biomarker analyses in both the lab and directly at clinical trial sites. [Chris Reidy, Boston Globe, Jan 18]

Delcath Systems

Also IPOing this week is DELCATH SYSTEMS with zero revenue and a $57M loss last year by five employees. It makes a system to isolate the liver from the general circulatory system and to administer chemotherapy and other therapeutic agents directly to the liver.

Deltanoid Pharmaceuticals

Deltanoid Pharmaceuticals (Madison, WI, no SBIR) raised $12M in a second financing round led by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. ... to continue developing for clinical trials two compounds with the potential to treat side effects of renal failure ... brings to $16 million the total raised by Deltanoid, which was started in 2001. The company has fewer than 12 employees [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Dec 18]

Dendreon

Dendreon down 45%.[Apr 28, 09] Shares of the company hit a 52-week high of 25 earlier in the session, but tumbled shortly before being halted prior to the announcement and never resumed trading. [Wall Street Journal, Apr 29] Dendreon's experimental immune therapy extended prostate cancer patients' lives by 4.1 months and improved three-year survival by 38 percent, the firm announced today. [Seattle Times, Apr 28]

An experimental treatment that takes an entirely new approach to fighting prostate cancer proved it extends survival in a late-stage study, Dendreon said Tuesday, sparking a leap in its stock price. [Seattle Times, Apr 15, 09]

Dendreon shares rose from a months-long slumber today after three members of Congress called for an investigation of the FDA's decision not to approve the Seattle company's lead therapy for prostate cancer, Provenge. ... However, it's unlikely that a Congressional investigation will propel Provenge forward, because the interim clinical trial results sought by the FDA might be available before the inquiry reaches any resolution, Latta said. [Seattle Times, Dec 13,07]

Dendreon jumped nearly 14% early [Jul 3, 07] boosted by a scientific article that cast positive light on its flagship anti-prostate cancer therapy, Provenge. [Angel Gonzalez, Seattle Times, Jul 3] It ended the day up 7%.

Dendreon plunged 64% after the FDA requested more clinical data to support the effectiveness of the Seattle biotechnology company's prostate-cancer drug, Provenge. The news was a setback for Dendreon and other companies with treatments that use the body's immune system. Among those stocks, Cell Genesys declined 6.1%; Antigenics lost 12%; and Favrille fell 18%. [Wall Street Journal, May 10]

DermAvance Pharmaceuticals (Berwyn, PA)

Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania invested $2.3 M in 10 companies in its latest round of funding. DermAvance Pharmaceuticals (Berwyn, PA; no SBIR). received the largest investment -- $500,000. ...acquires and commercializes anti-aging products. [Philadelphia Business Journal, Jun 6, 08]

DE Technologies (King of Prussia, PA)

DE Technologies (King of Prussia, PA; $7M SBIR) has won a contract worth a little more than $6.9 million from the Office of Naval Research to develop technologies for a small-diameter, shaped-charge warhead, the Defense Department said [Philadelphia Business Journal, Dec 31, 08]

Dewey Electronics (Oakland NJ)

Low Dollar, More Sales. John Dewey rarely sells his signature line of electronic generators abroad. But two months ago, the CEO of Dewey Electronics (Oakland NJ; no SBIR) started getting calls from overseas. He asked a Greek government official what had changed. "I said, 'You guys would generally never talk to us,' " Dewey said. "And he responded, 'With the dollar doing what it is, it's changed the assumptions.' " [Hugh Morey, northjersey.com, Nov 4, 07] Now if DOD and NASA would use SBIR for more firms like Dewey and less on modeling turbulence and rocket plumes, US export sales could do more to re-balance the national accounts.

Dexcom

Dexcom up 10% [May 29, 09]

Dexcom up 12% [May 18, 09]

Dexcom up 12% [Mar 23, 09]

Dexcom up 10% [Mar 10, 09]

Dexcom down 11% [Mar 2, 09]

Dexcom up 12% [Feb 11, 09]

Dexcom up 11% [Feb 6, 09]

Dexcom down 13% [Jan 20, 09]

Dexcom up 12% [Jan 16, 09]

Dexcom up 12% [Jan 6, 09]

Dexcom up 19% [Jan 5, 09]

Dexcom down 16% [Dec 18, 08]

Dexcom down 11% [Dec 15, 08]

Dexcom up 11% [Dec 12, 08]

Dexcom up 10% [Dec 8, 08]

Dexcom up 10% [Dec 5, 08]

Dexcom up 50% [Dec 4, 08]

Dexcon up 12% [Oct 28, 08]

Dexcom down 10% [Oct 15, 08]

Dexcom up 25% [Oct 13, 08]

Dexcom down 18% [Oct 9, 08]

Dexcom down 10% [Oct 7, 08]

Dexcom up 10% [Jul 22, 08]

Dexcom up 10% [Jul 11,08]

Dexcom up 11% [Jun 13, 08]

Dexcom up 13% [May 12, 08]

Dexcom up 21% [Apr 18, 08]

Dexcom up 16% [Apr 7, 08]

Dexcom down 10% [Mar 28, 08]

Dexcom down 13% [Mar 10, 08]

Dew & Ken Group (Madison, WI)

A Wisconsin company that has opened two new subsidiaries in China is hoping to play a big role in LED development. James Sun, company founder, worked on developing the technology for high-power LEDs while working at Lumileds, a Silicon Valley spinoff of HP ... Sun's company, Dew & Ken Group (Madison, WI), employs 20 people worldwide and has installed more than 260 LED streetlights in China, with orders for another 2,800. [Thomas Content, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jun 7, 08]

DiFusion Technologies (Austin, TX)

DiFusion Technologies (Austin, TX, no SBIR) a start-up medical device company, is gearing up to launch a flagship product that will target the orthopaedic market at the same time it's raising additional capital. Dr. Matthew Geck, founder and board member of DiFusion, said the company will release a medical device this year capable of killing 650 types of bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as MRSA (also known as �Superbugs�), in local surgical wounds for up to four weeks following surgery. .... plans to seek between $2 to $3 million in its Series A round of funding in early 2009, [Austin Business Journal, Jan 6, 09]

Digirad

Digirad down 18% [Apr 24, 08]

Digirad down 13% [Mar 17, 08]

Digirad down 10% [Jan 23, 08]

Digirad down 18% [Jan 8, 08]

Digirad up 16% [Nov 26, 07]

Digital Fusion (Huntsville, AL)

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions (San Diego, CA; no SBIR) will Digital Fusion (Huntsville, AL; $600K SBIR) in an all-stock $38M deal. [San Diego Union Tribune, Nov 25]

Dialing for Dollars. [Stewart Hall] decided to create a government contractor nearly from scratch. He assembled a group of investors, many of them fellow lobbyists. Together they bought a 25% stake in Huntsville, Ala.-based Digital Fusion Inc., a small technology-consulting company on the verge of bankruptcy. It did little business with the government, so Mr. Hall set out to beef up its defense-contracting business. Today, it mainly helps government agencies use computer technology for tasks ranging from budget analysis to missile engineering. That happens to be a growing part of the government's large defense operations in Huntsville, the home terrain of Sen. Shelby.... It has snagged more than $85 M in federal software contracts. In the two years since Mr. Hall invested in the company, revenue tripled to $20.9 M. The stock shot up as high as $3.75 earlier this year from a low of 15 cents before Mr. Hall showed up. [Brody Mullins, Wall Street Journal, Oct 7] Digital Fusion now has a Phase 1 STTR from the Army, but the public record will never show whether any political influence was used to win it. And why does a company with $85M in federal software contracts and an in with an influential Senator need nursery funding? For the same reason that other SBIR firms with $200M in past SBIRs, it's easy money once you learn how.

Digital Optics

Light Stopped. Two physicists slowed light by trapping it in a really cold crystal of praseodymium-doped yttrium-silica crystal. Phil. Hemmer at the AFRL and Selim Shahriar at MIT sent the news to Physical Review Letters while the try stretch the hold time to tenths of a second. [facts from Business Week, Nov 19]. Sharhiar also has commercial dreams, although not with halted light. from an SBIR Phase 2 from BMDO in his company Digital Optics.

Disc Dynamics (Eden Prairie, MN)

Disc Dynamics (Eden Prairie, MN; no SBIR) was founded in 2000 to develop the Dascor technology and has received $65 M from private and venture capital investors. Disc says The potential market for devices and related biologics treating back maladies is estimated to be $4.1B in the United States this year, and is expected to grow 20% annually.$10M of the VC money came from Steve Stassen who sold his previous company SpineTech to a Swiss company in 1998 for $600M, and Stassen went on to help found the venture capital firm Split Rock Partners. But he never forgot the promise of the Dascor technology. [Janet Moore, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Jun 11] With that scale of knowledgeable financing, a company does not need, and cannot afford, the slow nickels and dimes of SBIR.

Discovery Labs

Discovery Laboratories (Warrington, PA; one Y2K SBIR) entered into definitive agreements Friday with institutional investors that will provide the company with gross proceeds of about $11.3 million. The deal will give the biopharmaceutical company a needed cash infusion following a setback last month when the FDA for the fourth time, delayed making a final decision on the company�s new drug application for its flagship new drug candidate Surfaxin. [Philadelphia Business Journal, May 11, 09]

Discovery Labs up 18% [Apr 29, 08] while still awaiting FDA approval.

Discovery Labs down 16% [Apr 29, 08] awaiting FDA approval.

Displaytech (Boulder,CO)

One Million Micros(Dec 24)Displaytech (Longmont, CO) shipped its one millionth microdisplay, after 12 months of volume production. The millionth microdisplay shipped was a LightView NTSC Monochrome FLC Video Display, produced specifically for use in electronic viewfinders of digital camcorders.Displaytech specializes in ferroelectric liquid crystal (FLC) displays after about $13M of SBIR over a dozen years.

Displaytech develops second source Ferroelectric liquid-crystal microdisplay maker Displaytech (Longmont, CO) announced that new primary manufacturing facilities in Nagano, Japan, are now producing its displays. The facility, Miyota Company, is executing all phases of microdisplay production. Rather than working with retrofitted semiconductor machines, Miyota has put together its own microdisplay-specific production machines that include packaging, assembly, thin-film, and vacuum tools. The swing into production will open the door to a difficult-to-reach Japanese customer base, according to Displaytech.

Displaytech HP Alliance
(Nov 10) With Enough Money, and Time, and Patience... Hewlett-Packard (not a small firm) says it has an alliance with Displaytech (Boulder, CO) for ferro-electric liquid crystal wherein Displaytech makes the reflective silicon chips and HP does everything else, especially selling them. [Wall Street Journal, Nov 9] The government (SBIR) has pumped $12M or so into Displaytech since 1985 for the FLC stuff as the company's employee count steadily rose from one in 1985 to 45 last year. Is that a good enough return for 13 years of investment, and should government be doing that with a start-up nurturing program? No matter, it's being done with lots of other companies because government doesn't know what else to do with its SBIR money since SBIR has far too much money and far too fragmented a management for any efficient start-up program.

Keep Priming, Please
(Feb 19) Displaytech (Boulder, CO) has pursued the application of Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal technology, which offers substantial advantages over other approaches. [Handschy & Locke, Advanced Imaging, Jan97] For a decade SBIR has invested something like $10M in Displaytech's FLC with exhortations to get commercial. Now it promotes yet another potential use - high performance virtual displays. But Hanschy's article mentions no business success, only a bright theoretical future. It sounds like so many SBIR Phase 2 proposals with a bright future if only government will prime the pump, and prime, and prime.

Distributed Energy Systems (Wallingford, CT)

Distributed Energy Systems (Wallingford, CT; $2M SBIR) says that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. [Mass High Tech, Jun 13]

Divergence (St. Louis, MO)

Divergence (St. Louis, MO; $2.5M SBIR) said it raised $11.8 million in Series C funding to continue development of its technology to prevent or control parasitic nematode infestations [CleanTech Group release, Feb 16, 09]

Diversified Energy (Gilbert AZ)

BioFuel from Pork. Two companies, Diversified Energy (Gilbert AZ; formed in 2005) and Velocys (Plain City, OH) , are working together on a portable system that converts coal, natural gas, and biomass into diesel and jet fuel. The military could use the system to convert waste created at military bases--food scraps, paper, wood--into a fuel for military jets and vehicles. .... Velocys, a subsidiary of Battelle Memorial Institute, was launched in 2001 and has developed a portfolio of 70 patents and received $100 million of investment from industry leading partners, [Pachi Partel-Predd, MIT Tech Review, Dec 21] In June 2005 Congresswoman Deborah Pryce (R-Upper Arlington) today announced that $21.8M for Defense Department projects in Ohio is included in the FY 2006 Department of Defense Appropriations Bill, pursuant to her requests. In Oct 96 A Congressional appropriation for Velocys� synthetic fuels project was approved for fiscal year 2007. The latest contract to Diversified Energy is a Phase 1 SBIR.

DNAPrint Genomics (Sarasota, FL)

DNAPrint Genomics (Sarasota, FL), which trades for less than a penny a share and lost $12.3 million last year, has been told by its auditors that it is in danger of going out of business, ... "It's a long shot. That's the game we're in. They're all long shots," said Mark Chalek, chief of business ventures at [its deal partner] Beth Israel Deaconess. ... another frustrating chapter in the development of the drug, a form of erythropoietin invented in the mid- 1990s by Dr. Arthur J. Sytkowski of Beth Israel Deaconess, and known officially as PT-401. His work was financed through grants from the National Institutes of Health and the US Navy. [Christopher Rowland, Boston Globe, Apr 9]

DoX Systems (Toledo, OH)

Rocket Ventures, a pre-seed, early-stage venture fund for technology-based [Ohio] companies, has awarded Ignite! grants to three Toledo firms - ADS Biotechnology, TechTol Imaging, and DoX Systems. These grants are given to help the companies develop and use technology to create new products or improve processes that have an impact on jobs and revenues in Northwest Ohio. [Toledo Free Press, Jun 13, 08] No SBIR.

Dragon Systems

Another buyout has much less basis for any paternity claim by SBIR. Dragon Systems a big research house (but still under 500 employees) in speech recongition was bought by a Belgian company Lernout & Hauspie for something like $600M. Dragon's SBIR experience is $400K ten years after its founding and in the middle of its growth to over 300 employees. Talk big and fast to convince anyone that $400K wasn't just another nickel in the piggy bank. Inknowvation, a persistent SBIR advocate, has tried to make the case by crediting a 1993 DARPA $250K Phase 2 with the key that opened the door. It sounds more taking credit for United Airlines success by buying one round-the-world ticket. Outside finance came from Seagate Technology 1994-1997 in the form of a seeming 35% equity stake after which a planned 1999 $100M IPO busted when earnings started to falter.Ah well, if you are an SBIR advocate justifying SBIR's economics, you need all the imagination you can muster for every success no matter how small.

DT Solar

Last year, [Ted] Turner invested several million dollars in DT Solar (no SBIR) , a New Jersey company .... He also created a holding company, Turner Renewable Energy, and said that he's looking to expand his holdings. ...According the Solar Energy Industries Association, the photovoltaic industry grew by nearly 80% last year, and the solar water heating business more than doubled. [Austin American Statesman, Sep 26]

duPont Aerospace (LaJolla, CA)

executives at duPont Aerospace (LaJolla, CA; one SBIR) continue to declare the discontinued experimental military plane � and, more specifically, its engines � theirs. ... refuses to turn over two costly engines nearly a year after NASA demanded their return. The engines were purchased with a 2002 government grant to the company, and are valued together at $1.5 million. The parties appear poised to go to court to settle the issue. ... the congressman continued to push earmarked funding for nearly 20 years, finally totaling $63 million in 2007, the aircraft never passed a major technical review. [San Diego Union Tribune, Nov 4]

Dyax (Cambridge MA)

The FDA wants more information about Dyax's drug candidate DX-88 but won't require the company to conduct more tests, Dyax said late yesterday. ... Shares fell 13% in aftermarket electronic trading [Boston Globe, Mar 27, 09]

Dyax and Fovea Pharmaceuticals SA said that they have entered into an exclusive license agreement for the development and commercialization of a Dyax drug candidate for the treatment of retinal diseases. [Boston Globe, Feb 9, 09]

Dyax said that it has entered into a committed equity financing facility under which it may sell up to $50 million of its common stock to Azimuth Opportunity Ltd. over an 18-month period. [Boston Globe, Oct 30,08]

Dyax jumped 15% after the company reported positive results from a second late-stage study of its treatment for hereditary angioedema, a rare blood disorder. Dyax plans to apply for regulatory approval in the fourth quarter, which, if granted, would result in a mid-2009 launch. [Wall Street Journal, Aug 19, 08]

Dyax said it is negotiating with an Italian pharmaceutical company over the European licensing of one of its drug candidates. [Boston Globe, Jul 15, 08]

Euro Too Dear. Dyax has begun talks about closing the research facility of its Belgian subsidiary in Liege, Belgium, officials report. ... enable Dyax to consolidate its discovery and preclinical programs at its headquarters in Cambridge, company officials said. The weakening U.S. dollar has contributed to a rise in operating costs in Europe. [Mass High Tech, Apr 28]

Dyax entered into a license agreement with Paris-based sanofi-aventis that gives an exclusive worldwide license to the French pharmaceutical company for the tumor-fighting monoclonal antibody DX-2240 [Mass High Tech, Feb 12,08]

Dyax filed to raise up to $100M. [Dec 26, 07]

Dyax and German company MorphoSys AG announced the signing of a licensing agreement covering a broad patent portfolio relating to antibodies and protein. The agreement grants MorphoSys a fully paid up license to a variety of phage display-related patents from Dyax as well as other patents. [Chris Reidy, Boston Globe, Nov 20]

Dyax signed a third extension of the antibody library collaboration with New York-based ImClone Systems Inc. for the discovery of therapeutic antibodies, officials report. [Mass High Tech, Nov 8]

Dyax (Cambridge, MA: 3 Phase 1 SBIRs) signed a deal to discover therapeutic antibodies for a German pharmaceutical company. [Mass High Tech, Sep 6]

Dyax reports positive results from a Phase 3 clinical trail of the Cambridge firm's lead drug for the treatment of hereditary angioedema (HAE). [Mass High Tech, Apr 13]

Dyax (Cambridge MA) granted a non-exclusive license to its antibody phage display libraries to ZymoGenetics Inc. for the discovery of therapeutic antibodies. ... The pact adds to Dyax's more than 75 revenue-generating licensing agreements for therapeutic discovery. [Mass High Tech, Oct 31] Three Phase 1 SBIRs.

DynaBil Industries(Greene County, NY

DynaBil Industries (Greene County, NY; no SBIR) plans to expand its business, investing almost $10M ... will increase the size of the aeronautics parts manufacturer by well over 50% ... manufactures precision aircraft sheet metal parts and assemblies from titanium, stainless steel, aluminum and exotic metals ... such parts as titanium door and window frames and parts for the 787's floor. ... employs 200 people ... still a tiny piece of the aviation industry, worth about $205B last year. [Alan Wechsler, Albany Times-Union, Apr 13]

Dynavax Technologies

The Nasdaq warned Dynavax Technologies (Berkeley, CA; $400K SBIR) it doesn�t meet a minimum shareholders� equity rule for listing on the exchange. [San Francisco Business Times, Nov 16, 08]

Dynavax down 59% after the FDA put a clinical hold on a late-stage trial for its Hepatitis B vaccine Heplisav. Dynavax and co-developer Merck said that one patient in a study outside of the U.S. was diagnosed with an uncommon disease causing blood vessel inflammation. All patients in that study have completed dosing with the vaccine. [theStreet.com, Mar 18,08]

Dynavax down 12% [Mar 17, 08]

Dynavax Technologies up 12% [Feb 25, 08]

Merck has agreed to pay biotechnology company Dynavax Technologies (Berkeley, CA; two SBIRs) up to $136M for the rights to co-develop and eventually sell Dynavax's experimental hepatitis B vaccine, [San Jose Mercury News, Nov 1, 07]

Dynavax Technologies fell 30% on poor results in its a clinical trial of its ragweed-allergy treatment Tolamba. Two Phase 1 SBIRs.

Do-It-All Flu Shot. On the hunt for a vaccine against bird flu, biotech companies are coming up with leads on something even better: a universal vaccine that works against all kinds of flu. ... Dynavax Technologies in Berkeley believe they have found a possible solution. They have developed a vaccine that targets two other common flu proteins, the nucleoprotein and matrix protein, which tend to remain stable. [Steve Johnson, San Jose Mercury News, Oct 30] At least two Phase 1 SBIRs

Dynogen Pharmaceuticals

Dynogen Pharmaceuticals (Waltham, MA; no SBIR) filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection this week, meaning the company will likely be liquidated.... burned through at least $67 million in venture capital and other funding... trying to develop drugs for irritable bowel syndrome, overactive bladder disorder, and nocturnal gastroesophageal reflux disease (often associated with heartburn). [Boston Globe, Feb 24, 09]

Apex Bioventures Acquisition Corp. said it agreed to acquire for $98M in stock Dynogen Pharmaceuticals (Waltham, MA; no SBIR) focused on gastrointestinal and genitourinary disorders. [Boston Globe, Feb 7, 08]

Eagle Optoelectronics (Boulder, CO)

A Business Week story says Eagle Optoelectronics Inc. (Boulder, CO) is in the van on WDM plug-in optical cards. Eagle got its only Phase 2 SBIR from BMDO in 1995 for a new type of an "intelligent" DWDM transceiver able to tolerate millisec-scale time-varying wavelengths.

Echelon

Echelon down 10% [Apr 7, 09]

Echelon up 13% [Mar 10, 09]

Echelon up 11% [Feb 13, 09]

Echelon up 10% [Feb 6, 09]

Echelon down 11% [Jan 20, 09]

Echelon up 13% [Dec 17, 08]

Echeoln up 11% [Dec 16, 08]

Echelon up 11% [Dec 12, 08]

Echelon up 15% [Dec 8, 08]

Echelon down 16% [Dec 1, 08] On a stock bloodbath day

Echelon up 13% [Nov 26, 08]

Echelon up 11% [Nov 24, 08]

Echelon down 10% [Nov 14, 08]

Echelon down 10% [Nov 6, 08]

Echelon down 24% [Sep 29, 08]

Echelon down 11% [Sep 26, 08]

Echelon up 15% [Sep 18, 08]

Echelon up 10% [Sep 16, 08]

Echelon up 11% [Aug 13, 08]

Echelon down 14% [Jul 30, 08]

Echelon up 13% [Jul 14, 08] on news of a Danish deal to service 390,000 homes.

Echelon up 11% [May 27, 08]

Echelon up 12% [May 15, 08]

Echelon down 11% [Apr 29,08] on accounting problems.

Echelon down 10% [Mar 27, 08]

Echelon up 12% [Mar 5, 08]

Echelon up 18% [Feb 7, 08] on good earnings.

Echelon down 10%. [Dec 31, 07]

Echo Therapeutics (Franklin MA)

Sontra Medical (Franklin MA; one SBIR) a developer of transdermal treatments and diagnostics, reports it has officially changed its name to Echo Therapeutics [Mass High Tech, Oct 8, 07]

Ecocurrent

Thirteen NC companies will split $1 M from a new state fund intended to help businesses create environmentally friendly technologies. In the Triangle area: Ecocurrent of Raleigh received $100,000 to convert hog manure into electric power; Kyma Technologies of Raleigh received $60,000 to work with N.C. State University on a more efficient, cheaper electric switch.; 3F LLC of Raleigh received $100,000 to develop a natural fiber-reinforced concrete formula.; Piedmont Biofuels of Pittsboro received $75,000 to work on a reactor that more efficiently creates biodiesel.; Nextreme Thermal Solutions of Durham received $57,319 to manufacture a generator that converts waste heat into electricity.; Rain Water Solutions of Raleigh received $18,000 to develop a new rain barrel manufacturing process. [Raleigh News & Observer, Jul 1]

Eden Bioscience

After more than a year of limping along, Eden Bioscience (Woodinville, WA; one SBIR a decade ago) said that it will liquidate its assets. [Seattle Times, Dec 6, 08] up 77% to $1.40 a share but down more than 99% from $400 in 2001 ... sells harpin protein-based products to the home and garden markets in the United States. [Yahoo Finance]

Eden Bioscience up 23% [Apr 18, 08]

Edenspace Systems (Manhattan, KS)

Kansas Bioscience Authority gave Edenspace Systems (Manhattan, KS; $4+M SBIR) $360,000 to help match a $750,000 grant from the USDOE and a $350,000 grant from the USDA. The money will support the further development of technology to lower processing costs and increase yields of biofuels from sorghum, corn and switchgrass. ... The authority is a $581 million initiative created by the Kansas Economic Growth Act of 2004 to expand the state�s research capacity and bioscience clusters, support the growth of bioscience startups and stimulate bioscience business expansion and attraction. [Kansas City Business Journal, Jan 27, 09]

EEStor

EEStor says that it has taken a big step toward high-volume production of an ultracapacitor-based energy-storage system that, if claims hold true, would far outperform the best lithium-ion batteries on the market. ... But skepticism in the research community is high [Tyler Hamilton, MIT Tech Review, Aug 5, 08]

EEStor (Cedar Park, TX; no SBIR) has made bold claims about its technology but has so far failed to deliver a working commercial product. However, an agreement announced this month with Lockheed Martin, based in Bethesda, MD, suggests that the company could be making progress--at least enough to convince a major defense contractor that the technology has merit. The agreement gives Lockheed an exclusive international license to use EEStor's power system for military and homeland-security applications [Tyler Hamilton, MIT Tech Review, Jan 22]

EEStor's secret ingredient is a material sandwiched between thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets, like foil-and-paper gum wrappers stacked on top of each other. Charged particles stick to the metal sheets and move quickly across EEStor's proprietary material. The result is an ultracapacitor, a batterylike device that stores and releases energy quickly. "The idea of getting rid of the batteries and putting in capacitors is to get more power back and get it back faster," Hebner said. But he said nothing close to EEStor's claim exists today. [Grant Slater, AP, Sep 4]

Barium-titanate Silver Bullet. EEStor (a secretive Texas startup) boldly claims that its system, a kind of battery-ultracapacitor hybrid based on barium-titanate powders, will dramatically outperform the best lithium-ion batteries on the market in terms of energy density, price, charge time, and safety. Pound for pound, it will also pack 10 times the punch of lead-acid batteries at half the cost and without the need for toxic materials or chemicals, according to the company. ... Where they're weak, however, is with energy storage. Compared with lithium-ion batteries, high-end ultracapacitors on the market today store 25 times less energy per pound. [Tyler Hamilton, MIT Tech Review, Jan 22]

Eikos

ElectroChemical Systems Corp (Ridgewood, NJ)

ElectroChemical Systems Corp (Ridgewood, NJ) started delivery of its advanced FibroMillingTM Etcher equipment which enables the users to produce PWBs, MCMs and other substrates with until now unthinkable advanced designs - all at highly competitive cost. Almost entire electronic manufacturing depends on some form of wet processing involving etching. The FibroMillingTM Etcher has found immediate use in both military and civilian applications. As an inexpensive alternative to traditional equipment it can be directly retrofitted in existing PWB processing lines and provide immediate payback with its superior quality production. CEO Dr. I. V. Kadija, said, " Our first customers are taking advantage of this unique technology and positioning themselves ahead of competition." The commercialization came from a BMDO SBIR with help from the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology (NJCST).

Electro Energy (Danbury, CT)

Electro-Energy rose 10% before its afternoon report of 26% higher revenue and gross loss cut 84%. [Nov 20, 06]

Plug-In Hybrid. "If you look at how people typically drive cars, about half of the driving that you use gasoline for you could be using the electricity that comes out of your wall," says Martin Klein, CEO of Electro Energy of Danbury, CT, which developed the battery pack and control system for one of the cars on display in Washington. 100mph and wall plug recharge (although not at instant as pumping gasoline). Plug-in hybrids have a larger battery pack, which allows them to run on the electric motor much longer -- for 20-25 miles in the case of the Electro Energy car. [MIT Tech Review, May 24 ] [Thanks to Leslie Aitcheson of MDA's Tech App squad] Economics and convenience? Well, think of the benefit from avoiding $3 gasoline and don't ask questions about the total cost per mile for solely gasoline engines and plug-in hybrids. Electricity is NOT free and its cost will vary with the price of gasoline. Electro Energy got early Phase 2 help from BMDO SBIR and then at least four more from other agencies. Electro Energy says it got a $1M, one year AF contract to keep developing a manufacturing process for its NiMH aircraft battery. The stock is trading at half its six month ago price. [05]

Electro Energy got a $2M slice of pork to keep developing its bipolar nickel-metal hydride batteries with an Energy Dept earmark (Congressionally directed spending item). You, too, can go for such pork if your need for money overrides your ideals of lawmaking. Washington lobby houses like Strategic Marketing Innovations do small firms for a living.

ElectroEnergy suffered a power loss of 15% when it reported soggy earnings. And NVE lost 14% on a dismissive article by Motley Fool on No Visible Earnings with regard to its supposed licenses that have the market drooling. [Nov 23, 04]

Bipolar lithium for the spooks. Electro Energy (Danbury, CT) got an investment from the CIA's VC (In-Q-Tel) for bipolar design to lithium battery chemistry. CEO Martin Klein made the usual noises We are very pleased with the confidence that In-Q-Tel has shown in our company. EE got its first of only a few SBIRs from SDIO (grandfather of MDA) in 1992, the year of its founding when SDIO believed in funding new companies with entrepreneurial sounding proposals. Since EE joined the CIA portfolio, it has gone back-door public by merger this year and had a $5M private placement.

Earmark. Electro Energy said it will get $1M from the 2007 DOD budget for continued development of its bipolar wafer-cell Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) battery for advanced military aircraft applications. When an appropriation specifies the vendor of a product or service, it's politics. When Congress specifies a particular recipient of $1M out of a $530,000M budget, its politics.

Electro Energy got an $800K equity investment from In-Q-Tel, CIA's VC arm for advanced rechargeable bipolar lithium ion batteries. [Mass High Tech, Oct 21, 06]

Divided Management. Electro Energy (Danbury, CT) says it has received funding on two government contracts to continue the manufacturing technology development of its bipolar nickel metal hydride battery for military applications. The company received an additional scope of work and amendment to its contract with the U.S. Air Force that added approximately $1.7M. Electro Energy says it will direct the funds, which will be used over a 12-month period, at the continuation of the manufacturing technology development of bipolar nickel metal hydride batteries for aircraft applications. In addition, under a new contract with the U.S. Army for approximately $848K the company will direct manufacturing technology development at bipolar nickel metal hydride batteries for communication and other applications. [Mass High Tech, Jun 25] Roughly, Electro Energy has an interesting technology that the military wants. But the US military is not just one entity; it is competing services spending separately appropriated money often for the same technology intended for similar equipment with different colors of paint. Double management costs and extra costs for the company (reimbursed by the military) to manage two formally different customers.

Commercial Battery Production
Electro Energy (Danbury, CT) plans to enter full commercial production of a battery inspired by the design of fuel cells.... Martin Klein, who co-founded Fuel Cell Energy predecessor Energy Research Corp. in 1970, is ready to take Electro Energy off government contract work and into the commercial sector. To date, EE has subsisted on SBIR from the Department of Energy [and BMDO], and has been working with Ford in Partnership for a New Generation Vehicle. ... EE's patents lie in creating effective seals to prevent fluid leakage which is both a structural and materials problem and in eliminating separate terminals and current collectors, allowing it to make the battery lighter... Founded 10 years ago, Electro Energy was one of the older companies in this month�s Connecticut Venture Fair competition. It took home the Ignite prize for best business plan from a company that has raised $1M or less in venture financing.,, plus $10M in SBIR. [Mass High Tech, May 29]

Electro Optical Sciences

Electro-Optical Sciences up 13% [May 1, 09]

Electro-Optical Sciences up 11% [Mar 26, 09]

Electro-Optical Sciences down 17% [Feb 26, 09]

Electro-Optical Sciences down 12% [Feb 25, 09]

Electro-Optical Sciences up 10% [Feb 23, 09]

Electro-Optical Sciences down 14% [Feb 18, 09]

Electro-Optical Sciences up 12% [Feb 17, 09]

Electro-Optical Sciences up 80% [Feb 13, 09] said its experimental device proved effective in detecting melanoma, a type of skin cancer, sending its shares soaring [Reuters]

Electro-Optical Sciences up 28% [Feb 6, 09]

Electro-Optical Sciences down 26% [Feb 5, 09]

Electro-Optical Sciences down 13% [Feb 4, 09]

Electro-Optical Sciences up 11% [Jan 28, 09]

Electro-Optical Sciences up 25% [Dec 30, 08]

Electric-Optical Sciences down 17% [Dec 15, 08]

Electro-Optical Sciences up 13% [Dec 8, 08]

Electro-Optical Sciences up 13% [Nov 26, 08]

Electric-Optic Science up 19% [Oct 31, 08]

ElectroOptical Science down 14% [Oct 24, 08]

Electro Optical Science down 11% [Oct 23, 08]

Electro-Optical Sciences up 10% [May 27, 08]

Electro-Optical Sciences up 13% [May 16, 08]

Electro-Optical Sciences up 18% [May 2, 08]

Electro-Optical Sciences up 27% [Mar 24, 08]

Electro-Optical Sciences rose 14% after announcing the initiation of the pivotal clinical trial for MelaFind�, the company's non-invasive, point-of-care instrument to assist in the early diagnosis of melanoma [Feb 21, 07].

Electro-Optical Science up 11%. [Nov 15, 06]

Electro-Optical Sciences, a medical-device company, traded at $7.7 after its IPO at $5. EOS got part of its start with three Phase 2 SBIRs in the mid 1990s. The $5 was a big come-down from its summer dream of $10-12, says the Wall Street Journal (Nov 1).

Electro Scientific

Zygo (one Phase 1 SBIR) is among the more successful Connecticut-bred tech firms, with 375 local employees and a solid market niche. Its merger [with Electro Scientific (no SBIR)] � which is being contested in court by a shareholder group � would leave Zygo under the control of another company. But that is the best plan for nurturing the business, Zygo officials said. ... The deal is typical of a market where tech companies are searching for growth and capital, said Matthew Nemerson, president and CEO of the Connecticut Technology Council. [Kenneth St Onge, Hartford Courant, Dec 19, 08]

Elemetric Instruments (Los Alamos, NM)

Los Alamos National Laboratory has approved $250,000 in new funding for four companies from its Venture Acceleration Fund [which] provides investments of up to $100,000 to regional entrepreneurs, companies, investors or strategic partners who use LANL technology or expertise to create or grow regional businesses. Award recipients are chosen based on potential for regional impact, team composition, technical feasibility, market opportunity, and the availability of matching funds or in-kind contributions. Retriever Technology (Santa Fe, NM; no SBIR) will receive $25,000 to upgrade a low-light imaging camera for advanced digital imaging into a more user-friendly and functional form for customer demonstration and evaluation. Elemetric Instruments (Los Alamos, NM; no SBIR) will get $100,000 to further develop a prototype of an instrument that immediately detects elements in liquids and gases with continuous online, real-time processing. The device, called an element presence detector, is based on LANL technology with potential markets among food and pharmaceutical makers. STAR Cryoelectronics (Santa Fe, NM; $2M SBIR) will get $75,000 to accelerate development of a high-resolution alpha particle spectrometer to be used in nuclear forensics and nuclear nonproliferation work. Veezyon (somewhere, NM; no SBIR) will receive $50,000 to improve the technical capabilities of its Veezyon.com Web site � a knowledge-based online video site focusing on shared interest user collaboration. Since the venture fund was launched in fall 2006, LANL has awarded about $600,000 to six companies, not including the new grants, [New Mexico Business Weekly, Jan 7, 09]

Elixir Pharmaceuticals (Cambridge MA)

Elixir Pharmaceuticals is calling off its IPO. The 9 year-old biotech says it has raised a total of $87 million in three rounds of VC. [Mass High Tech, May 12, 08]

Elixir Pharmaceuticals that was expected to go public this week, has postponed its initial public
offering,. [Boston Globe, Jan 18]

Elixir Pharmaceuticals (Cambridge MA; no SBIR) plans fan IPO for $86 M. With 30 employees it most recently raised $10M VC from Swiss drug giant Novartis AG atop an already $100M from US VCs. [Mass High Tech, Sep 24, 07]

Elixir Biopharm

Bioheart and Elixir Biopharm going public this week. Neither used SBIR. [Jan 08]

Eltron Research (Boulder, CO)

After two decades of SBIR support (at least 40 Phase 2s), Eltron Research (Boulder, CO) may have the way that America can return to what was common as late as about 1950 - making fuel gas from coal. A news item in MIT Tech Review (Oct 03) notes that Eltron has developed a candidate membrane that separate hydrogen from carbon dioxide with tenfold better efficiency than present membranes (which means that today's technology is grossly inefficient). The enviro trick is to create lots of hydrogen while preventing the scads of accompanying carbon dioxide from escaping into the ionosphere. Instead the CO2 would be pumped underground for long term storage or disappearance. Chevron, BP, and Shell contributed and expect a piece of the pie from the jpoint R&D project. Eltron seems to have grown from a handful of employees in the mid-80s to 70-ish today.

e Magin (Hopewell Junction, NY)

eMagin up 13% after being down 10% early. Bloggers were blogging, including one seeing smoke and mirrors in a neat technology too expensive for the consumer game market. And yet another lossy quarter. [Nov 10, 06]eMagin up 15% after its 1:10 reverse split. [Nov 7, 06]

eMagin got a cold -26% shower after reporting the same loss as last year's quarter even though revenue rose nicely. And it said it had "serious cash flow pressure." A for-profit entity can't keep taking in $2.3 while paying out $6.1. [Nov 3, 06]

eMagin announced a November 1-for-10 reverse split to get its stock price back up to AMEX standards.

Brier Dudley [Seattle Times, Jan 2] sees eMagin as a star of the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas with its Z800 3DVisor. The company started life in early 90s [under a different name]with a half dozen SBIR Phase 1s and went public in 2000. It now has a market cap o $58 million despite selling a way under a dollar a share - down from $20+ in the opto-electronics boom. The company's website claims it continues to hold a leadership in OLED microdisplay technology and virtual imaging systems.

eMagin , which calls itself the leading developer of organic light emitting diode microdisplay technology lost $10M for the quarter. on revenues of $1.6M. The company press wriggled about pro-forma numbers that lost only $4.2M. One of the quarter's highlights was getting a 2001 U.S. Army SBIR Phase II Quality Award and 2000 Display of the Year Gold Award from The Society for Information Display and Information Display Magazine.

Read Screens in Daylight. got another $5M from the AF (Phase 3 SBIR) to keep developing microdisplays for way luminescent uses, to 30,000 cd/M2 which the company says is 200 times brighter than a laptop. [facts from Laser Focus World, May 01]

New DisplayeMagin (East Fishkill, NY), formerly FED, unveiled a full-color active-matrix OLED-on-silicon microdisplay at the International Display Research conference with 1.3M 12-?m subpixels in a quadpixel arrangement (four subpixels per color group). The OLED material itself emits white light, with color provided by filters built directly onto the display. The full-color capability is built upon the company's military, medical, and industrial-oriented 1280 x 1024-pixel display demonstrated last year. eMagin plans to apply the technology to a consumer version available for sampling to systems manufacturers in early 2001. [press release]

Back Door IPO By merging with a shell company, FED Corp (Hopewell Junction, NY) became a public company eMagin in March without an IPO. It began life in 1993 to exploit semiconductors for display systems. It bought Virtual Vision in 1998 to evolve into an integrated provider of total systems solutions. It claims $35M in government contracts and research grants, and another $60M capitalization through 1999 including a recent $27M private placement led by Citigroup and Verus International Ltd. FED got its SBIR start with three Phase 1 awards in the 1993 TRP SBIR hawgrassle (150 winners from 2450 proposals) when it had seven employees, and then an 1999 Army Phase 2 with 76 employees. One of its technologies is OLED competing with UNIAX.After trading for a while in the low 20s it plunged in the tech slide to the mid-teens.

Embrex (RTP, NC)

Three former Embrex executives, including Randall Marcuson, who led the company for 16 years before it was sold last year, claim in a lawsuit that the new owners reneged on compensation and benefits they were promised. ... A spokesman for Pfizer said the company is in compliance with the contracts. [Raleigh News&Observer, Jan 22, 08]

The Raleigh News and Observer notes that the execs of Embrex have collected multi-millions from the absorption by Pfizer without even losing their jobs.

Of the $155M that Pfizer will pay Embrex owners, Catherine Ricks, who recently retired as vice president of research and development, should get at least $1.3M. [Raleigh News and Observer, Nov 17] Catherine was the voice of Embrex in countless SBIR conferences.

Embrex, 1990s poster child for USDA's SBIR, rocketed 40% on news that it was being bought by Pfizer. [Nov 15, 06] Four small Phase 2s from USDA and one from NSF.

Embrex was one of the companies in which the head of FDA held stock options during his brief tenure. Crawford will plead guilty to two misdemeanors for failing to fully disclose holdings in firms regulated by the agency. [ Wall Street Journal, Oct 16, 06]

Chickens Abandon Embrex (Jul 31) Traders knocked a third off Embrex on ten times average volume when it reported a huge dive in revenue from its egg inoculation technology. High PE multiples need high growth rates of profit.

Embrex stockholders had a good April as the price rose 50% despite a soggy general market and despite consensus estimates that its earnings will go up only about 5% next year.

Embrex reported another profitable quarter and year with growing revenue and profit. The stock price trend for the last year shows what steady profits do for stock prices, modestly upward.

And They'll All Taste Alike
(Aug 17). Embrex says it got a research pile from NIST to clone chickens. Only the best eating chickens, of course, disease-resistant. Origen Therapeutics and Embrex got $4.7M for no early expected breakthrough. A reuters report says The company aims to breed or genetically engineer a chicken with the required traits and then ``bulk-grow'' embryonic stem cells taken from fertilised eggs as soon as they are laid. Those cells will then be injected into the embryo of a fertilised recipient egg. Origen has a patent on the process still at the application stage. Embrex produces machines that can inject vaccines into up to 50,000 eggs an hour, the magazine said.

Is That A Boy Chick in There? Embrex made a funding deal that has Cobb-Vantress paying for lots of Embrex's development of a patented technology and device to determine the gender of poultry in the egg. For that money, Cobb-Vantress will receive favorable commercial terms upon adopting the gender sort device. The idea is that growers can have boy houses and girl for growing broilers. Embrex sees a $300M world market for the selctivity and has budgeted between $5-7M for the project. Cobb-Vantress is a poultry research and development company doing production, improvement, and sale of broiler breeding stock. Embrex is an international agricultural biotechnology company specializing in poultry In addition to Forbes's 200 Best Small Companies in America and BusinessWeek's Hot Growth 100, Embrex is also listed on the North Carolina Technology Fast 50. [Facts from company press release]

Embrex, the egg innoculator, said its quarterly profit went over $2M, a first, on revenues of $11M.

Embrex won a small money ($270K) Phase II SBIR from Ag for development of an automated device for sorting poultry eggs by gender. Said Catherine Ricks, VP of R&D, Embrex has made substantial progress in developing a gender sorting device; and in laboratory trials, we have determined gender in a series of eggs with 100% accuracy. We plan to use this grant to further advance development of a novel device used to sort avian eggs by gender. Embrex says that Separation of chicks by gender at hatch is a valued aspect of the poultry industry - hens for eggs and roosters for broiling. It also says that gender sorting is an area that, to date has been underutilized by the poultry industry despite its potential advantages to the business. This is primarily because a cost-effective solution has yet to be found. Currently, a chicken's gender is determined manually and relatively expensively. [facts from company press release] So, why is the government putting a smidgeon of money into a public company for a cost-effective method when the company earned EBITDA of $12M last year? What is a free-market government for? Will Embrex's directors vote Republican to foster free-markets for business? Would W have the gumption that his father didn't show and shut down corporate welfare with his veto pen? Well, not if he keeps his election claim of making nice with everybody in Washington.

Cut Them Off From SBIR. When a company uses its cash to re-purchase shares to hold up the share trading price, it should be cut off from subsidy programs like SBIR. Embrex, poster child for the USDA, says it will extend its repurchases, and the stock rose last week in response. SBIR's whole raison d'etre is to fill and investment gap in high-tech companies. Any company that uses its cash to re-purchase its own stock has thereby declared it does not need R&D investment help. Some time ago, SatCon also announced such repurchase plans although it is not clear that any stock was ever actually repurchased.

Embrex (Research Triangle Park, NC) reported a 62% rise in profits to $1.8M for the quarter on a 16% rise in revenues. It also dsaid that it started a series of field trials for the in ovo coccidiosis vaccine with a major poultry producer. Jim Green, a VC said in a Wall Street Transcript interview that Embrex has developed and commercialized the first ''in ovo`` platform delivery system which inoculates chicken eggs several days prior to hatching and thus eliminates the need for individual manual vaccination of newly hatched chicks. Their machines can apply 20,000 to 50,000 inoculations per hour, which renders tremendous savings in labor costs, as well as ensuring that every bird gets its proper medication.'' The USDA rooster is still crowing over Embrex's success with one SBIR.

Embrex reported record revenue and earnings for 1999. Profit doubled to $5.7M, on 18% higher revenue of $34M. Embrex credited the gains to sales of its Inovoject systems, which vaccinate baby chicks through the eggshell before they hatch. USDA SBIR helped hatch the early development. (Mar00)

(Nov 9) Embrex reported doubled profits for the quarter on an 11% rise in revenues. It also entered into a multi-year collaborative R&D deal with Pfizer to develop a ovo coccidiosis vaccine for parasites in poultry. Embrex is the poster-child for USDA's SBIR after one small Phase 2 in 1987. The stock market has favored Embrex with a doubling of price over the last year. What is USDA's SBIR like? Judging only by the Phase 2 awards for 1999, a narrow base indeed, USDA likes to spread its small money around in little packets and has a lot of squishy projects that have practically no tech innovation. Even one to help find angel investors. Feels like some backroom political pressure.

(May 11) Embrex (Research Triangle Park, NC) reported quarterly profits of $527K, double last year's quarter. The company, a poster-child for USDA's SBIR, sells Inovojects to vaccinate broiler chickens before they hatch.

EMCORE (Somerset, NJ)

Emcore down 16% [Nov 5, 08]

Emcore up 18% [Oct 20, 08]

Emcore up 19% [Oct 13, 08]

Emcore down 14% [Oct 7, 08]

Emcore up 10% [Sep 30, 08]

Emcore down 17% [Sep 29, 08]

Emcore up 26% [Sep 18, 08]

Emcore up 10% [Sep 17, 08]

Emcore down 11% [Sep 9, 08]

Emcore received two new definitive supply agreements for solar cell receivers worth a total of $29 million. [New Mexico Business Journal, Jul 9, 08]

Emcore down 11% [Jul 1, 08]

Emcore down 13% [Jun 30, 08]

Emcore up 13% [May 1, 08]

Emcore up 16% [Apr 2, 08] received a follow-on order of $4.6 million for solar-cell-receiver assemblies from Concentration Solar la Mancha, a unit of Renovalia Energy. [Wall Street Journal, Apr 3, 08]

Emcore down 11% [Mar 25, 08]

Emcore down 23% [Mar 18, 08]

Emcore down 10% [Feb 15, 08]

Emcore up 14% [Feb 7, 08] on expected revenue increases.

Emcore up 10% [Feb 1, 08]

Emcore up 11% [Jan 31, 08]

Emcore down 10% [Jan 15, 08]

Emcore up 19% on news that it would buy the telecom assets of Intel's optical platform division for $85 million, to expand its fiber optics product portfolio. [Reuters, Dec 18, 07]

Emcore up 22% [Dec 12, 07] agreed to supply solar-power systems with a combined 60 megawatts of annual generating capacity for a Pod Generating Group project in Ontario, Canada. [AP]

Emcore down 15% [Nov 12, 07]

Emcore up 10% on news that it has received a $24M solar cell order from Australia-based Green and Gold Energy. [Aug 29, 07]

Emcore up 11%. [Aug 8, 07]

Emcore up 17% [Jul 19, 07] without benefit of news.

Emcore up 11% despite pending de-listing from NASDAQ. [Feb 23, 07]

Emcore fell 15% after declaring a profit. [Jan 9, 06] but a poorer than expected revenue to come.

Emcore down 10%, canceling its 8% rise the day before. [Nov 7, 06] Its involvement in options back dating didn't help.

In the fourth paragraph after the good news of higher revenue and gross profit margin was the bad news of yet more loss, $9M this time, for Emcore. [spring 05]

Emcore sank another 18% when Merrill Lynch poured ice water on capital growth estimates for the semiconductor industry.

When You're Cold, You're Cold. reported revenues up 76% to a record $53M. Profit? After paragraphs of various kinds of gross profit numbers, the press release comes to the net loss, Excluding non-recurring items and goodwill amortization, net loss for the quarter decreased 39% sequentially to $1.7M compared to a net loss of $2.8M. That's a lot of accountants dancing. The market, soggy overall anyway, responded by dumping more EMCORE to drive it 5% lower Friday to a new 52-week low.

Emcore Makes a Profit(May 1) Quarterly revenues doubled to $48M and net profit (after many accounting gyrations) was $3M. The market seemed to like the news as it bid Emcore up 20%.

Like laser light bouncing between mirrors, the shares of Emcore spent the year careening between 18 and 80. The small firm had a stock-market capitalization of $2.5B, and then $1.5B, as its shares fell back to a recent 49. That 's still a handsome price for a company with about $100M in annual sales and a decade-long deficit cumulating at $96M. A year ago, shares in the Somerset, New Jersey, outfit fetched eight bucks (adjusted for a recent stock split). Dazzling investors is Emcore's deal to supply a new kind of laser to optical networking giant JDS Uniphase. ... Clearly, this is a market that is expected to grow rapidly. It's also worth noting, however, that despite their importance to the still white-hot optical networking industry, these will be commodity products. And at this early stage, it's impossible to predict whether any VCSEL supplier will dominate. Indeed, even if Emcore garners half of the most optimistic forecasts for the VCSEL market, its shares, at 15 times revenues, are no bargain. What's more, Emcore has yet to prove that it can run a profitable business. Over the past decade, the company has delivered a nearly unbroken stream of losses. AXT, in contrast, has produced a nearly unbroken stream of profits.... In the mid-'Nineties, control of the company passed into the hands of the merchant banking division of Jesup & Lamont -- a broker and investment banker for such disappointing small-cap stocks as Hearx, Fonix and Hungarian Broadcasting. Richards was president of the merchant banking unit before he stepped in as Emcore's CEO in 1996. He says he and Emcore's two other controlling shareholders no longer have ties to Jesup & Lamont. [Bill Alpert, Barron's, Jan 1] How cozy that Jesup & Lamont published a "must have" recommendation on the stock summer 1999. Even if this pump turned out well for those who believed it when the stock was at $8, investors should treat a "must have" from a broker with caution.

Number 20 in Bloomberg's 100 list for 2000 is Emcore which had risen 534% in its year in the Bloomberg sun. Sales were 79% above 1999 which themselves were three times 1995. Even with VCSELs in the 10 Gb range, it still hasn't made a profit.Bloomberg says The company is adroitly managed, its products are at the cutting edge, and it operates in some lucrative niches of the massiver semiconductor industry.

Emcore reported big revenue gains, 79%, and a 15% rise in R&D spending. No word on when it will become profitable. Embrex reported big increases in profit (20%) and revenue (18%). SDL was up 15% although its stock price dances to the tune of JDS-Uniphase whose stock the SDL holders would get in the merger. AstroPower reported aquarterly revenue increase of 43% but a shrunken profit caused by legal expanses of defeding government charges of illegal overhead allocations. For the nine months, profit doubled.

GELcore buys Ecolux. GELcore (a joint venture of giant General Electric and growing EMCORE) will buy Ecolux, a leading global Cnadain LED Signal manufacturer. Ecolux is recognized as a world leader in the LED industry, offering the largest range of high-performance LED traffic control signal modules. It has built a reputation as an innovator with advanced technology solutions including Diolux LED modules. These LED signal products offer tremendous return on investment to end users through energy savings and reduced maintenance costs. [SPIE's OPTICS.ORG NewsAlert, Aug 4]. GELcore's main thrust until now has been to develop and sell white lights based on EMCORE's white LEDs.

The termites are nibbling at the pilings under Emcore. In a steady downslope for July, losing half its value, it is now only five times its lowest price for 12 months. Still, all that mutual fund money ($73B billion in net new cash, the strongest ever) has to be invested somewhere and Emcore has a good story of future profits (for an SBIR company).

Emcore has made a nice move up, doubling in June. The only notable news was the announcement of a 26% efficient solar cell to feed the alternative energy frenzy that isn't hurt by recurring bouts of politicized retail gasoline prices. It also said it would expand its Albuquerque plant.

Photonic Snapback
(Apr 3) Emcore snapped back 44% Friday to close a wild week. It started the week worth $1.8B and ended it at $1.8B after passing through a trough at $1.2B. Said said Christopher Ely, manager of the Loomis Sayles Aggressive Growth Fund. This is a nice, solid correction..But with the economy rocketing along at 7.3%, an unheard of growth rate, the Old Economy will have the cash to buy Emcore's photonics niceties in the next decade. It is not a dot.com company.

Using EMCORE to compete with Cree. EMCORE says that UCSB Professors Shuji Nakamura and Steven DenBaars have ordered an EMCORE SpectraBlue gallium nitride (GaN) production platform for their pioneering development of GaN-based laser diodes and electronic materials and devices. Professor Nakamura, noted for his outstanding contributions to the semiconductor industry in blue lasers and blue spectrum High Brightness Light Emitting Diodes (HB-LEDs) based on GaN epitaxy, recently moved from Nichia Chemical in Japan to become a professor at UCSB. Nichia and Cree have been going head-to-head in the world market for blue lasers that last long enough to be ecoonomic.

Emcore raised $136M with a secondary offering at $136.

Optical Skywriting
(Feb 18) Emcore rocketed 59% on no news but an apparent delayed realization that deals, if finalized, with JDS and Agilent (a sub of HP) for product sales willl have huge benefits. Emcore is now ten times its price of three months ago.

Why Is EMCORE Sinking? Who knows? Its stock price is down a third in a few weeks. Insiders have been noted selling (the chat boards in places like Yahoo don't let such news go untouted). But the chatters also have good opinions, OLED's Are a great idea- in theory; but, as the company(Universal Display) itself points out, they are no where near the point of SELLING a product "for the forseeable future" . This is in obvious contrast to Emcore which has paid its dues and over the past 14 or so years steadily converted its basic science strengths into marketable products, which it sells to leading customers throughout the world. Really, Universal has 6- count em'- six- employees. They make less than a few hundred thousand in revenue and have accumulated debt over 15 million. Emcore makes HBLEDs- NOW. They have joint ventures with huge corporations with powerful marketing capabilities and exposures(not to mention Compound Semi machines, sensors, vcsels, satellite panels,wireless apps etc.). No thanks, I will just stick with my Emcore holdings and let the GE lightwaves carry me home! Says one optimist, I believe that Emcore is somewhat similar to Microsoft in 1980's. Emcore products, all of them, help change this world. That is why Jessop and Lemont rates this stock a "must own" opto-electronics stock. I believe we see sometime soon stock price in triple digits. Triple digits??? Why not? SDL did it.

The Big and The Growing
(Jan 22) GE Lighting and EMCORE (Somerset, NJ) formed a new joint venture for white LEDs with dreams of a $1B market within the next decade. The new company, GELcore LLC, will develop white LEDs as replacements for miniature automotive, compact fluorescent, halogen and traditional incandescent lighting. They call it the greatest revolution in lighting since the development of the Edison bulb. Bold talk! They also talk of a lifespan of over 100,000 hours and a lot less energy use.

Emcore Loses Money
(Dec 14) Emcore (Somerset, NJ) says it expects to be profitable in 1999 after a disappointing $6.7M loss in the latest quarter (Blame the GM strike and the semiconductor industry overcapacity.) Meanwhile Uniroyal Technology Corp, a plastic products and specialty chemicals maker bought 6.4% of Emcore through a $9M purchase of convertible preferred stock.

Emcore Building
(Apr 8) Emcore (Somerset, NJ). is seeking $55M in industrial revenue bonds to build a solar-cell plant in Albuquerque. .. The bond issue would be among the largest in city history. According to its proposal, the new plant would nearly double Emcore's existing operations. Emcore West designs, develops and builds advanced solar cells for the satellite industry. Emcore, which had sales of $47.75 million in fiscal 1997, established its presence in New Mexico late last year through the $30 million acquisition of Micro Optical Devices, a spinoff of Sandia Labs. [Albuquerque Journal, Apr 7]

(Oct 6) Emcore (Somerset, NJ) said its MOCVD was as good as MBE for pHEMTs. The AF SBIR made a 35 GHz half-watt power device. Maybe that's why EMCORE's stock is doing so well. If you don't know, don't worry. MBE has always been thought the best, albeit expensive route. But now that everybody has MOCVD anyway, it's a big advance to get the same quality. SBIR programs get zillions of proposals to use an existing MOCVD to do some material. It's gets government to amortize the investment.

(Jul 30) Emcore (Somerset, NJ) made $900K profit on $14M sales for the quarter but still shows a loss for the nine months. Emcore, which went public this year after several years of SBIR, makes semiconductor production systems.

(Mar17) EMCORE (Somerset, NJ) raised $22.5M in a Mar 6 IPO. The $9 share price was at the bottom of the expected range but the subsequent weeks' trading, ending at $12 gave the underwriters the profits they were seeking (on top of the 10% service charge). BMDO had given EMCORE two Phase 2 SBIRs and claim some paternity for the sales and employee growth from 60 employees in 1988 to 200 today with sales of $28M. Return to Index

Emcore Files for IPO
Emcore Corp (Somerset, NJ) filed Dec 23 to go public. The filing claims: With 38% of the market, Emcore is the leading supplier of metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) compound semiconductor production systems with prices from $350,000 to $2.5 million. Emcore also designs and makes semiconductor wafers and package-ready devices, with customers including some of the world's largest electronics makers who use the stuff for cellular telephones, pagers, direct broadcast satellite systems, CD-ROMs, and flat-panel displays.[Source: IPO Central] BMDO supplied two SBIR awards, one by Peter Norris, now CEO of his own firm NZ Applied Technologies (Woburn, MA), and the other with a little matching private investment. A year ago Emcore ranked about #140 in lifetime SBIR with $3.5M.

Emergent BioSolutions

Emergent BioSolutions, in a push to diversify beyond its biodefense business, plans to announce today that it is buying Protein Sciences (Meriden, CT; $900K SBIR), a maker of a next-generation flu vaccine that federal regulators have put on a fast track to approval. for $75M [Kendra Marr, Washington Post, May 27]

Emergent Technologies (Austin, TX)

Austin-based Emergent Technologies Inc. will announce today that it has raised a $27.1 million venture capital fund to create biotechnology startups in Texas. A number of high-profile Austin business executives invested in the fund, which will be used to commercialize technology developed in the University of Texas System. [Austin American-Statesman, May 7]

Encysive Pharmaceuticals(Houston, TX)

Encysive Pharmaceuticals doubled on news that Pfizer was buying it for $195M. [Feb 20, 08]

Encysive Pharmaceuticals announced it, along with partner companies, have filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Barr Laboratories of Woodcliff Lake, N.J., relating to Argatroban injections. According to the suit, Barr is seeking approval to market a generic version of Argatroban. Houston-based Encysive said the patent covering the drug does not expire until June 2014. [Houston Chronicle, Dec 29]

Encysive Pharmaceuticals (Bellaire, TX; 2 Phase 1 SBIRs) the developer of a drug for a fatal lung disease, failed to overturn a decision by U.S. regulators that delayed its therapy from reaching the market. [Houston Chronicle, Sep 6]

Encysive Pharmaceuticals formerly Texas Biotechnology, Houston, TX; three small SBIRs), the maker of a treatment for a fatal lung disease, said its chief financial officer had resigned, the second executive departure since the company's drug was delayed by regulators. ... The company also laid off 150 employees and retained 65. [Houston Chronicle, Jul 10] The stock price is down 80% from its range two years ago.

Endece

Endgame Technologies

It's September, do you know where your football is? A startup venture, EndGame Technologies, has designed novel computer modeling software to assist NFL coaches with critical play-calling decisions ... Already, their statistics on past NFL games have revealed that teams consistently lose approximately one game per season by making the wrong play calls in critical situations. ... But, it's too good: still illegal under NFL guidelines.

Endocyte (West Lafayette, IN)

Endocyte (W Lafayette, IN; $3.5M SBIR) is about to see if it has the right stuff to get a drug to market. .... In a brutal fundraising environment, the company needs to continue raising tens of millions of dollars to get its wide portfolio of cancer-killing drugs through expensive, late-stage clinical trials. And in the coming weeks, Endocyte needs to enroll about 120 female cancer patients at more than 50 sites in North America and Eastern Europe to test one of its drugs in a Phase II trial for ovarian cancer. Traditionally, fewer than 10 percent of cancer patients consent to try an experimental drug. ... "We have good research, good technology, but the fundraising climate is awful," said Ron Ellis, Endocyte's president. .... It has raised more than $80 million in venture capital, grants and licensing agreements. It has kept its original investors through four rounds of fundraising, a sign they are pleased with the progress the company is making. [John Russell, Indianapolis Star, Mar 9, 09] If SBIR were a venture capital fund, it would steer its money into the agencies that produce these kind of results and away from agencies grinding out sweet technology with no investment future. Instead, SBIR is a social "fair-share" program administered by agencies that may or may not care about investment success. If Congress wants SBIR to be an investment engine for new small companies, it has to drastically re-make its structure and incentives. For example, it might consider shrinking the SBIR tax on agencies and sending the money to some investment entity with management rewards for investment success.

Endocyte (West Lafayette, IN; $3+M SBIR) secured $15M in venture credit through Oxford Finance Corp. and GE Healthcare Financial Services acting as agent. ... to pursue targeted therapies and diagnostic imaging agents to fight ovarian, nonsmall cell lung and kidney cancers. ... also has announced an exclusive licensing agreement with R&D Biopharmaceuticals to use its tubulysin anticancer agents in conjunction with Endocyte's proprietary drug- conjugate platform. [Indianapolis Star, Feb 5, 08]

Ener1 (Ft Lauderdale, FL)

Think, a Norwegian maker of electric cars,...said that EnerDel of Florida would supply batteries for its upcoming City vehicle in a contract that could be worth $70M from 2008 to 2010. [San Jose Mercury News, Nov 1]

EnerDel's owner said it expects to secure a major supply agreement with Europe's Think City electric car. Sales in 2009 and 2010 could total $70 million for lithium-ion batteries to be produced in Indianapolis, said Florida-based Ener1. [Indianapolis Star, Oct 16]

Ener1 (one SBIR)'s subsidiary, EnerDel (Indianapolis IN), next week will unveil a lithium-ion battery pack developed for the hybrid electric vehicle market. [Indianapolis Star, Oct 6, 07]

Lithium ion battery researcher EnerDel has received a $6.5 M contract to continue research for Detroit's automakers, owner Ener1 (Ft Lauderdale, FL; one SBIR) said Tuesday. EnerDel is trying to develop an affordable and powerful lithium ion battery for hybrid vehicles. The U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium awarded the 18-month contract. [Indianapolis Star, Sep 19, 07]

Energen

Energen down 12% [Mar 5, 09]

Energen down 10% [Mar 2, 09]

Energen down 12% [Jan 20, 09]

Energen up 13% [Dec 17, 08]

Energen down 10% [Dec 1, 08] On a stock bloodbath day

Energen up 18% [Nov 24, 08]

Energen up 16% [Nov 21, 08]

Energen down 12% [Nov 14, 08]

Energen up 23% [Nov 13, 08]

Energen down 20% [Nov 12, 08]

Energen down 15% [Nov 11, 08]

Energen up 10% [Nov 7, 08]

Energen down 12% [Nov 6, 08]

Energen up 15% [Nov 3, 08]

Energen up 15% [Oct 30, 08]

Energen up 14% [Oct 28, 08]

Energen down 10% [Oct 27, 08]

Energen up 13% [Oct 20, 08]

Energen up 12% [Oct 16, 08]

Energen down 14% [Oct 15, 08]

Energen down 10% [Oct 10, 08]

Energen down 11% [Sep 29, 08]

Energetiq Technology (Woburn, MA)

Energetiq Technology (Woburn, MA; one SBIR), a maker of advanced light sources for nanoscale fabrication and analysis, has landed $3.8 million of a $5 million Series C round, according online reports. [Mass High Tech, Dec 2, 08]

Energy Control (Albuquerque , NM)

Energy Control (Albuquerque , NM; no SBIR) has a received one of two Stevie Awards for the Best Overall Company in the U.S. with under 100 employees. ... New Mexico's oldest energy technology company, recently celebrated its 32nd anniversary. It has 65 employees and annual revenues of approximately $14 million. [New Mexico Business Journal, Jun 27, 08]

Energy Conversion Devices (Troy, MI)

Energy Conversion Devices down 20% [May 7, 09]

Energy Conversion Devices up 12% [Apr 22, 09]

Energy Conversion Devices down 10% [Apr 20, 09]

Energy Conversion Devices up 11%% [Apr 2, 09]

Energy Conversion Devices down 15% [Mar 30, 09]

Energy Conversion Devices up 12% [Mar 26, 09]

Energy Conversion Devices down 23% [Mar 17, 09] said it is slowing the pace of its expansion plan and pulled its guidance for the third quarter and fiscal year. [Wall Street Journal, Mar 18]

Energy Conversion Devices up 13% [Mar 10, 09]

The financial crisis has wreaked havoc on the big-swinging solar stocks. Since September, solar energy stocks have lost 79% of their value, according to the Claymore/MAC Global Solar Energy Index exchange-traded fund. .... First Solar is another hot company due to its unique manufacturing process. Unlike SunPower's conventional crystalline silicon-based solar products, First Solar uses thin-film technology, which is cheaper. As a result, the Tempe, Ariz.-based company saw earnings and revenue double in 2008. For the year, First Solar reported net income of $348 million on revenues of $1.25 billion. .... Energy Conversion Devices also uses thin-film technology, but its product is different in interesting ways. Most solar panels are hard, flat planes, but ECD's product can be rolled onto roofs in strips, are lightweight, and can become part of the physical roof. .... But the nascent market likely will benefit from a number of trends, including the reduction of carbon sources, resistance to nuclear energy and the potential for renewable mandates and carbon dioxide regulations. Industry observers say those trends will lead to higher costs for conventional energy sources, while solar energy prices decrease. Says O'Rourke: "When that happens, it will be potentially explosive." [Carl Gutierrez, Forbes, Mar 6, 09]

Energy Conversion Devices up 12% [Feb 24, 09]

Energy Conversion Devices down 10% [Feb 17, 09]

Energy Conversion Devices up 10% [Dec 3, 08]

Energy Conversion Devices down 18% [Dec 1, 08] On a stock bloodbath day

Energy Conversion Devices down 10% [Oct 23, 08]

Energy Conversion Devices down 15% [Oct 22, 08]

Energy Conversion Devices up 25% [Oct 13, 08]

The risk with Energy Conversion Devices has to do with the company's spending much of the 13 years since it went public fostering exaggerated expectations while delivering only meager results to the bottom line. But this time I am a believer. I expect ECD's fiscal 2009 revenues to almost double and its earnings per share to almost quadruple from the year before. The shares trade at 32 times my 2009 estimate of $1.80. [Jim Oberweis, Forbes, Oct 27, 08]

Energy Conversion Devices down 14% [Oct 8, 08]

Energy Conversion Devices down 19% [Oct 7, 08]

Energy Conversion Devices up 10% [Sep 30, 08]

Energy Conversion Devices down 12% [Sep 29, 08]

Energy Conversion Devices up 13% [Sep 24, 08] after a Senate energy bill extended investment tax credits for the solar power industry for eight years. [AP]

Energy Conversion Devices down 19% [Sep 23, 08]

Energy Conversion Devices up 17% [Sep 19, 08]

Energy Conversion Devices up 10% [Sep 16, 08]

Energy Conversion Devices up 15% [Jun 16, 08]

Energy Conversion Devices up another 16% [May 30, 08] after Germany, the largest market for sun-power supplies, cut its subsidies by less than expected. [Wall Street Journal, May 31]

Energy Conversion Devices up 43% [May 8, 08] as increased demand for solar products helped the Rochester Hills, Mich., energy-products supplier post higher fiscal third-quarter results and peg the high end of its fiscal fourth-quarter sales outlook ahead of Wall Street estimates. [Wall Street Journal, May 9]

Energy Conversion Devices up 12% [Feb 7, 08] on talk of sustainable profitability.

Energy Conversion Devices up 10% [Dec 20, 07] presumably basking in handouts of the newest energy law.

Energy Conversion up 11% [Dec 12, 07] had its day in the sun after winning an important deal to supply solar panels to a major installer of rooftop energy-collecting devices. [Forbes]

Energy Conversion Devices up 12% on bigger loss and even bigger revenues. [Nov 8, 07]

Is something brewing at Energy Conversion Devices Inc., a developer of alternative energy products? ... Stock and options on the Rochester Hills, Mich., company traded briskly yesterday ... Options activity also was heavier than usual as investors got in position for a sharp uptick in the share price in coming weeks. [Yvonne Ball, Wall Street Journal, Oct 4]

Energy Conversion Devices up 11% on news of a Chinese company getting a royalty-bearing right to make certain batteries using ECD's technology . [Aug 8, 07]

Energy Conversion Devices took a 16% hit [Feb 9, 07] when it reported more losses. The company said that it doesn't expect to reach sustainable profitability during fiscal 2007. "This is in large part due to the fact that it is taking longer than we originally expected to secure additional funding opportunities for our emerging technologies," That sounds like send us more money to develop a product that might make money in the future.

Ovshinsky, 84 years old, finds himself running his factory at full capacity and overwhelmed with orders. His company, Energy Conversion Devices Inc., is the largest U.S.-owned maker of photovoltaic materials, which convert sunlight to electricity. The company is a pioneer in an exploding global industry selling $15 billion a year of what's called "PV." [Wall Street Journal. Nov 27]

Energy Conversion Devices says that its President and Chief Scientist and Technologist, Stanford Ovshinsky, discussed a fundamentally new device, called the Ovonic Quantum Control, which has the potential to open a whole new field of semiconducting control devices. The Ovonic Quantum Control, based on Stan Ovshinsky's invention of a unique proprietary all thin-film control device, is based on new physics and has multifunctionality beyond that of transistors. In response, the stock traders yawned the stock down 4%. Last week, the fourth broker in the last year initiated coverage of the stock - with a BUY. Caveat emptor. The stock trades in the low 40s, and has ranged from 5 to 58 in the last six years.

Wall Street has grown increasingly enamored with alternative energy stocks. A prime example: Energy Conversion Devices, a 40-year-old company that sports a market cap of $1.4 billion and has never made any money. ... In 1968, the New York Times featured an invention from the company and its founding inventor, Stanford Ovshinsky, with the headline: "Glassy Electronic Device May Surpass Transistor." That didn't exactly happen. [Jesse Eisinger. Wall Street Journal, Feb 15 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113997484135674387.html?mod=todays_us_money_and_investing ]

Energy Conversion got a 12% cold bath when Herb Greenberg of Market Watch said it was selling a stale tale, part of which was that the company has a history of going through joint-venture partners the way sick people go through Kleenex. Read Greenberg http://www.marketwatch.com/news/yhoo/story.asp?source=blq/yhoo&siteid=yhoo&dist=yhoo&guid=%7B2C8CC8F0%2DB362%2D4897%2DAA9E%2D901989023D2C%7DEnergy Conversion Devices led the NASDAQ percentage gainers with 20%. on news of a long-term license agreement for Memory (OUM) thin-film semiconductor memory technology originally invented by ECD founder S. R. Ovshinsky [press release, Dec 28, 05]

One Economist annual innovation award to: Stanford Ovshinsky, president and chief scientist and technologist, Energy Conversion Devices, for developing the nickel-metal-hydride battery. This is the battery technology found in hybrid cars, laptop computers and many other devices, and is just one of the many innovations devised by Mr Ovshinsky, a self-taught inventor who pioneered the field of amorphous materials in the 1950s. He is now focusing on solar panels and hydrogen-powered cars. [The Economist, Dec 10, 05]

What gets investors excited about Energy Conversion Devices are the patents it owns on nickel metal hydride batteries used in hybrid cars. ..Most of Energy Conversion Devices' revenue comes from solar-panel sales. In these days of high energy prices, solar has been an "if you build it, they will come" sort of business. Nevertheless, the company has failed to meet analysts' sales projections for four quarters. [Justin Lahart, Wall Street Journal, Nov 8] Meanwhile The Economist opines on ECD as a pioneer in hydrogen storage and solar cells, has seen its shares soar by 50% this year and venture-capitalists are taking an increasing interest in the industry. ... and as High oil prices are spurring investments in alternative fuels for a False Dawn? The report of soggy profits (=$6M loss) sent the stock tumbling 8%

Energy Conversion Devices, another NiMH company, has seen its stock has double since last summer and got a recent plug from Gene Marcial's Business Week column (Jul 4). Some big money is involved: GM has ordered batteries for its hybrid vehicles and Chevron has a join venture with ENER for production and marketing the batteries.

Energy Recovery (San Leandro, CA)

A process that helps water-desalination plants recycle energy drew investors to the initial public offering of Energy Recovery (San Leandro, CA; no SBIR) creating some excitement in an otherwise barren new-stock market. [Wall Street Journal, Jul 3]

Energy Solutions (Salt Lake City, UT)

no objections have been raised on health and safety grounds, not even from the state, on a scheme by Energy Solutions (Salt Lake City, no SBIR) to import nucear waste from Italy, reprocess it in Tennessee, and dump the residue in Utah. But the enviro watchdog groups have weighed in with cards and letters to the politicians who are now awake and posturing. [Salt Lake Tribune, Jun 11]

Enertech Environmental (Atlanta GA)

Enertech Environmental (Atlanta GA; $2M SBIR) (of 34 total awards) won a runner-up award in the Environmental field for Technology Innovation 2007 by the Wall Street Journal.

Engineous Software (Cary, NC)

Engineous Software (Cary, NC; 3 Phase 1 SBIRs) agreed to be acquired by French software maker Dassault Systemes for $40M. [Raleigh News & Observer, Jun 20]

Enlight Bioscience (Boston, MA)

startup Enlight Biosciences LLC (Boston, MA; no SBIR) has partnered with Johnson & Johnson Co., bringing its available development funding up to $52 million. In July, Enlight made its formal launch announcement, with backing from drug giants Eli Lilly & Co., Pfizer Inc., and Merck & Co. Inc. At that time, it claimed it had $39 million on hand. [Mass High Tech, Jan 22, 09]

Enlight Biosciences, a Boston life sciences startup, reports it has launched in collaboration with the support of three major pharmaceutical companies to advance technologies for drug discovery and development. The company said that will direct up to $39 million in funding, and its pharma partners include drug giants Eli Lilly, Pfizer, and Merck. ... PureTech Ventures, a Boston venture firm, founded Enlight with academic bigwigs such as Nobel laureate Robert Horvitz, a professor of biology at MIT; Sam Gambhir, a professor of radiology at Stanford University; Rakesh Jain, a professor of tumor biology at Harvard Medical School; Raju Kucherlapati, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Cambridge-based biotech firm Millennium Pharmaceuticals Inc., according to the startup. [Mass High Tech, Jul 10] If have the eventually marketable goods and the brains, you don't need government subsidy.

Entech (Dallas, TX)

Solar technology company Entech Solar Inc. has moved its corporate headquarters from Ewing, N.J., to Fort Worth ... also said it has changed its name from WorldWater & Solar Technologies Corp. Entech Inc ($5M SBIR), a company that WorldWater acquired, is now a subsidiary of Entech Solar. Entech makes and sells a combined photovoltaic and thermal concentrating solar systems for commercial and industrial customers. [Dallas Business Journal, Jan 13, 09]

Entegrion

EnteroMedics (Roseville,MN)

EnteroMedics (Roseville, MN; no SBIR) considered one of the most promising local med-tech start-ups in recent years, said it is laying off about 18 percent of its workforce.... developing a pacemaker-like device to treat obesity ... went public in November 2007, raising about $40 million.... Last month, closed on a $20 million loan to help fund a 300-patient clinical study testing its obesity-fighting device. [Janet Moore, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dec 2, 08]

Entra Pharmaceuticals (Waltham, MA)

drug delivery startup Entra Pharmaceuticals (Waltham, MA: no SBIR) raised $4.23 million in a first tranche of a Series A round, which could be expanded to $12.5 million by November 30 [Mass High Tech, Dec 18, 08]

EnVivo Pharma (Cambridge, MA)

EnVivo Pharma (Cambridge, MA; one SBIR) got $65M in fourth round VC from Fidelity Biosciences which has already bought out other investors. Total funding $125M. [Mass High Tech, Nov 3, 08]

Enzenia

The DOD spooks renewed their license subscription for Ezenia (Burlington, MA; $800K SBIR) InfoWorkSpace product, The DIA has used InfoWorkSpace the past nine years. [company statements] Note: the spooks needn't do SBIR.

Enzo Biochem

Enzo Biochem up 10%% [Apr 2, 09]

Enzo Biochem up 10% [Mar 23, 09]

Enzo Biochem up 12% [Mar 11, 09]

Enzo Biochem down 12% [Mar 5, 09]

Enzo Biochem down 11% [Jan 20, 09]

Enzo Biochem up 12% [Jan 13, 09]

Enzo Biochem down 10% [Jan 9, 09]

Enzo Biochem down 10% [Dec 11, 08]

Enzo Biochem up 18% [Dec 2, 08]

Enzo Biochem down 18% [Dec 1, 08] On a stock bloodbath day

Enzo Biochem up 17% [Nov 26, 08]

Enzo Biochem up 23% [Nov 21, 08]

Enzo Biochem up 14% [Nov 13, 08]

Enzo Biochem up 14% [Nov 4, 08]

Enzo Biochem down 11% [Oct 21, 08]

Enzo Biochem up 13% [Oct 20, 08]

Enzo Biochem down 11% [Oct 17, 08]

Enzo Biochem down 15% [Oct 15, 08]

Enzo Biochem down 12% [Oct 8, 08]

Enzo Biochem down 26% [Oct 9, 08]

Enzo Biochem up 10% [Jun 12, 08]

Enzo Biochem up 11% [Mar 18, 08]

Enzo Biochem up 16% [Dec 6, 07]

Enzo Biochem up 13% on good financials. [Oct 16, 07]

Enzo Biochem up 11% [Aug 8, 07]

Enzo Biochem Up 19% [Aug 7, 07]

EOIR Technologies (Spottsylvania, VA)

EOIR Technologies (Spottsylvania, VA) (a subsidiary of Technest Holdings) got a $3.4M Army contract including night vision and advanced sensor applications, disposable sensors and other threat-detection systems. Since July , EOIR Technologies has brought another $29M under the overarching contract to add to its funded backlog of $55M.[story Mass High Tech, Dec 2] EOIR had one Army Phase 2 in 2003 for chemical agent detection.

EpiVax (Providence, RI)

NIH gave EpiVax (Providence, RI; $3M SBIR, 16 employees) two more SBIRs totaling $1M for vaccine and diabetes work. Which brings the company's grants to $2.5M for the year. [Mass High Tech, Dec 1, 08]

EpiVax (Providence, RI; $3.6 M SBIR) got a $600K NIH grant to develop a treatment for type 1 diabetes. [Mass High Tech, Jul 8, 08]

EpiVax (Providence, R.I) got a $358K Innovative Research Grant to re-engineer botulinum toxin (Botox). It already had about $3M in SBIR.

Epix Pharmaceuticals

EPIX Pharmaceuticals said that the US Food and Drug Administration has approved a use for Vasovist, its blood pool magnetic resonance angiography agent. [Boston Globe, Dec 23, 08]

Epix Pharmaceuticals (no SBIR) shares have shed about half their value and are trading at all-time lows after the company stopped development of an experimental depression treatment. [Boston Globe, Mar 21]

EqualLogic

Last month, EqualLogic Inc., a New Hampshire data storage start-up, was just days away from its initial public offering when Dell, the Texas-based computer maker, floated a formal offer to buy the company. The price tag was $1.4 B cash. ..great news for EqualLogic's employees and its venture capital investors ... But every sale of a promising New England start-up to an out-of-state entity makes our region feel a bit more like we're running a farm team, rather than playing in the majors. ... we also need to build the next generation of "pillar companies" here - companies like EMC Corp., Genzyme Corp., Boston Scientific Corp., Hologic Inc., and Nuance Communications Inc. These companies employ hundreds or thousands of people. They're acquirers, not acquirees. They lead industries, set the agenda, and attract the attention of media and Wall Street analysts. Smaller companies cluster around them. [Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe, Dec 16] What might the federal role be in doing the same thing for the nation? Well, if SBIR is to be one of such engines, it has to focus on companies with a future, not just a scientifically competent present.

Equex (Houston,TX)

(Apr 8) Although Howard Schmidt still has an equity position (of declining value) in his foundee SI Diamond Technology, he has a new enterprise. A web-based supplies exchange, Equex. in Houston. Howard founded Schmidt Instruments after leaving nearby Ionwerks with "$275 and not enough sense to know better", got SBIR for diamond research, took a license on a gamma-ray spinoff technology to make nearly diamond, went public in 1993, and flopped when the display development outran its capital. If good entrepreneurs are told by their scars, Howard is ready for success. Maybe, as Randy Frey said at the SBIR Conference, "The harder you work, the luckier you get."

bigger, faster, more powerful and more sophisticated.

Equipment Concepts

Fifteen of the 18 machines that Equipment Concepts Inc. is exhibiting at Wisconsin Manufacturing and Machine Tool Expo are completely new models since the last show in 2005. It's proof of how fast the machine-tool industry is evolving, said Mike McNamara, president of the Mukwonago-based company. [Rick Barrett, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Oct 10]

Ercole Biotech (RTP, NC)

Ercole Biotech, (RTP, NC; one Phase 2 SBIR) a UNC-Chapel Hill spinoff that employs eight, will be bought by a Portland, Ore., drug development company [AVI BioPharma ($1.5M SBIR) ] in a $9 million stock and cash deal. ...The drug is being tested in humans in Britain [Raleigh News&Observer, Mar 15, 08]

Escalon Medical (Wayne, PA)

Escalon Medical (Wayne, PA; no SBIR) completed a $1.1 million private placement of common stock and common stock purchase warrants. Founded in 1987, Escalon develops and markets ophthalmic diagnostic, surgical and pharmaceutical products along with vascular access devices. [Philadelphia Business Journal, Nov 21, 08]

Escoublac

Biogen Idec reports it has attracted the first biotechnology startup into its incubator intended to help fill the large biotech's drug pipeline. The Cambridge incubator's first occupant, Escoublac, is developing treatments based on scientific discoveries made at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. The firm's technology centers on a new link between bone biology and metabolism [Mass High Tech, Dec 19, 07]

eScription (Needham, MA)

Speech recognition software maker Nuance Communications Inc. of Burlington said today it will buy privately held medical transcription company eScription (Needham, MA; one Phase 2 SBIR) for $363 M. [AP, Apr 9, 08]

Essex Corp

Just the Government. Northrop Grumman Corp. has agreed to buy Essex Corp., a Columbia MD intelligence firm with strong ties to the National Security Agency, for $580 million cash plus absorbed debt. ... Essex is the star of a Cinderella story. It was expected to go out of business when chief executive Leonard E. Moodispaw, a former National Security Agency analyst, came on board in 1998. The company began building revenue from its optical processing technology, and after it landed significant contracts with NSA, the company's bottom line mushroomed. Essex went public, made five acquisitions and now employs nearly 1,000 people [Baltimore Sun, Nov 9] Eight Phase 2 SBIRs from only nine Phase 1s, and NSA doesn't even do SBIR. Its $150M in US intelligence and defense contracts make up over 90% of company revenue for its 761 employees. From 1992 to 2003, Essex received nine SBIR awards from [DOD], totaling about $6.1 M, to develop the Raptor optoelectronic processor. ..The company since has sold more than $6 M worth of Raptor-based systems to [MDA]. [Washington Technology 2003] Clearly the company made its mark selling intel to NSA with the help of an entrepreneurial former NSA staffer; the MDA purchase of $6M hardware after $6M of R&D is something that keeps companies going only as long as the government contract lasts. Sounds like Essex will fit in nicely in NG's government empire.

E-Tek Dynamics (San Jose, CA)

E-Tek Raises $140M
(Aug 13) E-Tek Dynamics (San Jose, CA) sold 4M shares and some stockholders sold 2M at $38.50 in a secondary offering. The next day the stock rose another 7%. E-Tek sells high quality passive components and modules for fiber optic systems and got some of its early money from SBIR, although not enough from SBIR to claim any great paternity.

Opinions Do Matter. When the Wall Street house started coverage of E-Tek Dynamics (San Jose, CA) with a Neutral opinion, the stock price plummeted 14%. Sky-high P-Es can't stand a Neutral.

World Trade Magazine recently ranked E-TEK 7th among the nation's fastest-growing high-tech exporters. Inc. Magazine's The Fastest-Growing Companies in America placed E-TEK number 281 for 1998.

E-Tek Goes Public
(Dec 3) E-Tek Dynamics (San Jose, CA), riding the Internet stock wave, went public yesterday raising $60M and leaving the founders with a personal value of $500+M after the price doubled on the first day's trading. E-Tek has seven SBIR Phase 2s when it was 5-7 employees in the mid-80s (five AF, one SDIO, one Army). If DOD would do some inventive accounting, it could calculate a healthy ROI from a hypothetical stock value and thus have some quantitative metric of its SBIR investment efficiency. Actually, vibes coming from DOD say that metrics are gaining favor with DOD upper management (that MAY trickle down to lower management where the decisions are made). It does no good for upper management to adopt an accounting scheme if it has no practical effect on management decision at lower levels. Ask Mr McNamara. E-Tek made $17M last year.

E-Tek Files IPO
(Aug 24) E-Tek Dynamics (San Jose, CA) filed to raise $90M in an IPO. E-Tek plans to make $17M profit this year on $100M sales and its 650 employees. That's a long haul from its 1985 AF SBIR days of 5 employees for ELECTRO-OPTIC MODULATORS and 1987 BMDO for MULTIAPERTURE COMPOUND EYE CONFIGURATIONS. E-Tek had seven Phase 2 SBIRs 1985-1992. Hoover's description: E-Tek Dynamics is helping communication networks light up. The company makes passive components used in fiber-optic networks: optical isolators, filters, couplers, and wavelength division multiplexing. Alcatel, Pirelli, and Corning account for about 60% of E-Tek's sales. Silicon Valley VC firm Summit Partners owns 47%, and wife-and-husband 1983 founder team of Chinese immigrants Theresa and J. J. Pan own 35%. How did E-Tek go so far with so few SBIRs when other info-tech optics companies seem to never quite get past the starting gate? Ask Physical Optics to explain the gap. Better still, ask the government why it allows Physical Optics and its ilk to sustain life on SBIR. The answer is that government doesn't care whether companies live on SBIR. The politicians get the same pork-barrel votes no matter which companies get the money and the federal agencies prefer "competent" and compliant companies to do their R&D.

EVapt (Austin, TX)

EVapt and 10 other Austin companies graduated Thursday from the incubator, which is affiliated with the University of Texas and the think tank IC2 Institute. Since its founding in 1989, ATI has graduated more than 200 companies, which have raised an estimated $750 million in funding.[Austin American-Statesman, Apr 24, 09]

Ever Cat Fuels

Augsburg, a small liberal arts college in Minneapolis that, at least until now, was not particularly known for its energy acumen .. invented a cheaper process for making biofuel - a metal-oxide catalyst, instead of nasty NaOH reactions ... Ever Cat Fuels, a start-up co-founded by Augsburg alumnus Clayton McNeff, is building a $5 million plant in Isanti that eventually will produce 3 million gallons of biodiesel fuel a year. [Thomas Lee, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Mar 7]

Evergen Biotechnologies

Connecticut gave out $9.8 M in stem-cell research grants to scientists at Yale and UConn with $900K to start-up Evergen Biotechnologies establishing the Connecticut therapeutic cloning core facility. [Mass High Tech, Apr 3]

Evergreen Solar

Evergreen Solar announced a wafer factory and subcontractor relationship in China. [Boston Globe, May 1, 09]

Evergreen Solar down 12% as its second-quarter net loss widened, and it projected third-quarter revenue below analysts' expectations. [WSJ, Jul 19, 08]

Evergreen Solar signed a sales contract with Germany's IBC Solar AG worth $1.2 billion - the biggest deal in the company's history. [Boston Globe, Jul 15, 08]

Evergreen Solar jumped 20% .... signed two long-term sales contracts valued at $600 million with solar-product makers GroSolar and Wagner & Co. Solartechnik [Wall Street Journal, Jun 20, 08]

Shares in Evergreen Solar were lit up by more than 33% at one point [May 22, 08] after the company announced $1 billion worth of new contracts. [smartmoney.com, May 22]

Evergreen Solar won $44 million in state incentives to build its manufacturing plant at the former Fort Devens and is already going full-steam ahead on a privately funded expansion that will double the capacity of that facility. [Boston Globe, May 16, 08]

Evergreen Solar is expected to announce today that it will double the size of its manufacturing facility at the former Fort Devens in Harvard and add about 350 new jobs as part of its ongoing expansion. [Boston Globe, Apr 8]

Just over a week after it was announced, Evergreen Solar has scaled back its a public offering of common stock from 20 million shares to 16 million, due to market conditions, [Mass High Tech, Feb 12,08]

Evergreen Solar up 10%, after it struck a silicon-supply agreement.

Evident Technologies (Troy, NY)

Shifting Incubators. Evident Technologies (Troy, NY) is moving into a new and different incubator. Having started life in an Albany incubator, and grown to 50 employees, it is now coming into the new incubator at Russell Sage college in downtown Troy for more research on quantum dots. It has had two DOD Phase 1 SBIRs. [Eric Anderson, Albany Times-Union, Sep 28]

Exact Sciences (Marlborough, MA)

cancer diagnostics company Exact Sciences (Marlborough, MA; no SBIR) has made biotech firm Genzyme a strategic partner in a deal worth $24.5 million. Under the terms of the deal Genzyme will acquire intellectual property rights to some of Exact�s prenatal and reproductive health technologies, and three million shares of Exact�s common stock. Exact will receive $24.5 million in cash. [Mass High Tech. Jan 28, 09]

Sequenom offered to acquire Exact Sciences for $1.50 a share, valuing the Maynard, Mass., maker of DNA-screening technologies at $41 million. [Wall Street Journal, Jan 13, 09]

Exact Sciences (Marlborough, MA; no SBIR) which is trying to use genomics to develop cancer screening technology, said late Wednesday night it has slashed its operations to preserve its cash, while pursuing a possible sale or other strategic alternatives. [Boston Globe, Jul 18]

Exagen Diagnostics (Albuquerque, NM)

Exagen Diagnostics (Albuquerque, NM; one Phase 1 SBIR) plans to expand its Austin operations while it awaits FDA approval for its breast cancer detection kit. [Lilly Rockwell, Austin Statesman-American, Apr 7]

Excel Technology

GSI Group (Billerica, MA) says that it will purchase Bedford�s Excel Technology (Bedford, MA; $1M SBIR in the 1980s) for $360 million cash. [Mass High Tech, Jul 10] A sister company Excel Superconductor also got $1M SBIR.

ExploraMed NC4 (Mountain View, CA)

ExploraMed NC4: The stealthy Mountain View company has raised $18.5 million of an expected $20 million first funding round, we're told. The medical-device start-up doesn't have a Web site, and doesn't even seem to have its own address yet. Instead, ExploraMed NC4 - the name is a placeholder intended to obscure the start-up's strategy - is still housed at ExploraMed, a medical-device incubator backed by New Enterprise Associates, among others. [Venture Beat: San Jose Mercury News, Apr 30]

Extremity Innovations

Competitive Meets Extremity. Intellectual property licensing firm Competitive Technologies Inc. (Fairfield, CT) reports it has signed a strategic alliance agreement with medical device company Extremity Innovations Inc (Memphis TN). [Mass High Tech, Oct 24]

EyeGate Pharmaceuticals

EyeGate Pharmaceuticals (Waltham, MA; no SBIR), a privately held, specialty pharmaceutical company using iontophoresis technology to safely and non-invasively deliver therapeutics into the front and back of the eye for treating serious ocular diseases, announced that the company has secured $15M million in a Series C venture financing round. ... founded in 1999 with technology licensed from Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami. [company website]

EyeTel (Centreville VA)

EyeTel (Centreville VA; one Phase 2 SBIR) going public this week to raise $12M.