Theranos, the controversial blood-testing startup that has been valued at $9 billion by private investors, recently decided to raise upwards of $200 million in new funding, according to regulatory filings the company made in Delaware (which were first noticed by VCExperts.com).
The new “Series C-3” stock authorization filing came just three days before a Wall Street Journal report questioned the efficacy of Theranos’s technology, and even suggested that the Silicon Valley company had tried to cheat on its lab proficiency tests. It had been approved by the company’s board of directors nearly one month earlier, on Sept. 19.
It is important to note that authorized shares have not necessarily been issued or sold. For example, other filings show that Theranos authorized the sale of 11.7 million “Series C-2” shares at $17 a piece back in February 2014. It then increased that amount this past January to a whopping 58.8 million shares at the same $17 per share price. But shortly thereafter, Theranos said in a different filing that it only had issued a total of 32.2 million of the authorized Series C-2 stock.
Theranos does not comment on its fundraising, so it is unclear exactly how much the company has raised to date. That said, the company did share some information for a Coins2Day cover story published in June 2014, at which time we reported that the company had raised around $400 million in total funding (at the $9 billion valuation). If we assume that it already had sold the first piece of that Series C-2 round, then the extra shares sold this past spring would put its total capital raised at around $750 million. And that’s before anything it raises from the new share authorization.
The company also keeps the identifies of its shareholders close to the vest, having previously identified just a small handful like Draper Fisher Jurvetson (which only committed $500,000 in a seed round), ATA Ventures, Tako Ventures, former board member Don Lucas and Oracle (ORCL) founder Larry Ellison.
Coins2Day has since learned, however, of several more investors that have never been otherwise disclosed. They include: BlueCross BlueShield Venture Partners, Continental Properties Co., Esoom Enterprise (Taiwan), Jupiter Partners, Palmieri Trust, Partner Fund Management, Dixon Doll, Ray Bingham and B.J. Cassin.
None of the investors Coins2Day managed to contact confirmed their involvement on the record, but two we spoke with on background said that they receive relatively little financial information from the company.
We also have heard from multiple sources that certain existing Theranos shareholders have been seeking to sell some stock via secondary exchanges, although have been unable to learn the identities of those holders.
A Theranos spokeswoman did not return requests for comment.
Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes is scheduled to be interviewed next week at the Coins2Day Global Forum in San Francisco.
