Startups survived, some thrived in COVID
New Mexico’s startup activity may have been less publicly visible during the pandemic as companies and programs moved online, but local entrepreneurship remains alive and well, and some newly-launched businesses are thriving.
Among the pandemic standouts is Santa Fe-based Avisa Diagnostics Inc., which went public on the Canadian Securities Exchange in May after reaching an agreement last year with investment group Global Emerging Markets Limited to provide Avisa access to a $41 million line of equity if the company began trading publicly outside the U.S. Avisa went live on the CSE in mid-May through a merger with another publicly traded entity, Fogchain Corp.
Avisa, which launched in 2010, has developed a rapid breath test for bacterial pneumonia and other pulmonary infections based on technology it originally licensed from the University of New Mexico. It previously raised $16 million in private equity, including money from Santa Fe-based Sun Mountain Capital, which manages the New Mexico State Investment Council’s Co-Investment Fund for investments in local startups, giving the state a significant stake in Avisa’s future success.
Over the next three years, Avisa will draw down on GEM’s $41 million line of equity to finance further product development and clinical trials to win U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for its technology.
Another standout — biomedical startup Nature’s Toolbox, or NTxBio — received $5 million in Local Economic Development Act funding last fall to relocate this summer from Santa Fe to a 25,000-square-foot facility in Rio Rancho. The company, which raised $13 million in private equity last year just before the pandemic hit, has created novel technology to rapidly develop new vaccines and drugs based on processes originally licensed from Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The LEDA funding has allowed NTxBio to build out its new Rio Rancho facility into a high-tech research and manufacturing center for new pharmaceuticals. The company, which launched in 2015, expects to hire 116 people over the next decade at an average annual salary of $74,000, representing about $74.5 million in additional payroll over the next 10 years.
Many more startups also had noteworthy achievements during the pandemic, in particular, Parting Stone of Santa Fe and Albuquerque-based BennuBio Inc., Build with Robots, and WaveFront Dynamics Inc.