THE total worth of Oxford Nanopore bosses is now more than £70 million after the latest investment round which valued the Covid mutation tracking firm at around £2.48 billion.
Oxford Nanopore had raised £195m in fresh cash from backers including Temasek, Wellington Management, M&G Investments and Nikon, reported The Telegraph.
Dr Gordon Sanghera, Dr Spike Willcocks and Professor Hagan Bayley, founded the company by spinning out research from the University of Oxford.
The shares of chief executive Dr Sanghera is now worth around £36m, chief business development officer Willocks has stocks worth £19m and Professor Bayley, who stepped down from the company years ago, holds stocks worth around £18.3m, The Telegraph report added.
The company's DNA sequencing tools have been used to help track Covid-19 mutations during the pandemic. These tools have been used for a fifth of all Covid-19 sequencing globally, across 77 countries.
The company is expected to make its debut in London Stock Exchange in the second half of the year.
According to reports, the company's float could be priced anywhere between £4.5bn and £16bn.
Genome sequencing has become crucial during the pandemic, with the company's technology used to help map the different Covid-19 variants.
Meanwhile, another Oxford University spin-out Vaccitech struggled in its debut in New York.
Vaccitech, which owns the intellectual property used to develop the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, had been targetting a valuation of $579m (£418m), but slumped on its first day of trading. Its market capitalisation now stands at $479m as the vaccine continues to face delays to its US approval, reports said.
