EdRip et al. sell Sapiens in trade sale

Ellie Pullen
26 August 2014

Tweet
Facebook
LinkedIn
Google plus
Send to

The backers of Sapiens Steering Brain Stimulation, including Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners (EdRip) and Wellington Partners, have sold the Dutch business to Medtronic for $200m in cash.

The deal marks the sixth trade sale for fund BioDiscovery 3, which closed in May 2008 on €150m after just three months on the road. Sapiens was the 13th investment made through BioDiscovery 3.

The company was backed by EdRip, Wellington, Inkef Capital, Wellcome Trust, Life Sciences Partners and Gilde Healthcare Partners.

Gilde's participation was not previously announced. According to the firm, it invested last year via its €145m Gilde Healthcare III fund, which closed in November 2013. The deal marks the first exit for GHC III, as well as Gilde's sixth exit in 12 months.

Minneapolis-based, NYSE-listed Medtronic will retain Sapiens' Eindhoven-based employees. The US firm plans on turning the Eindhoven base into a global research and development centre for Medtronic's neuromodulation business in the future.

Previous funding
EdRip and Wellington co-led the €13m series-A round for Sapiens in June 2011, with the latter investing via its €78m Wellington Partners III Life Science Fund. Life Sciences Partners also participated in the round.

This was followed by a further €10m investment in November of the same year from Wellcome Trust, The Michael J Fox Foundation and Agentschap.

In February 2013, Inkef injected a further €7.5m into the business.

Company
Founded in 2011, Sapiens is headquartered in Eindhoven with an additional office in Munich. The company develops medical devices specialising in steering deep brain stimulation for the treatment of degenerative or functional brain disorders, such as Parkinson's disease.

Sapiens has developed a probe, a neurostimulator implant and a series of procedures called SureSuite.

People
Jan Keltjens is the CEO of Sapiens.