Blackstone Technology Group receives $12.6 million in funding for high-throughput computing solutions in life sciencesWorcester 18 June 2001 In a sign of continued strong support for emerging technologies in life sciences, Blackstone Technology Group Inc., a provider of high-throughput computing software and services, announced the closing of $12.6 million in Series B venture financing led by Ampersand Ventures. Co-investors included Softbank Investment Corporation, Garfly Invest AG, Itochu International, and Synopsys Inc.
The financing announcement follows a series of high-profile client wins for Blackstone in life sciences, with several large biotech and pharmaceutical companies embarking on high-throughput computing projects supported by Blackstone's software and service offerings. Blackstone provides key enabling software and services that increase computing throughput for firms engaged in compute- and data-intensive analysis in genomics, proteomics, drug discovery, and other bio-related research. These solutions are designed to enable customers to manage, simplify, and accelerate computing, regardless of the underlying hardware architecture, whether it is compute farm, cluster, multi-processor server, or peer-to-peer network. Blackstone plans to further expand its life sciences offerings in 2001 by building on existing software lines, and introducing new ones. New lines will particularly focus in the areas of infrastructure management and optimisation. Because the volume of data in biotech and pharmaceutical research is growing exponentially - and each customer's requirements are unique - companies need more powerful, intelligent, and scalable computing infrastructure solutions to speed computer-based discovery. Blackstone's software and services optimise computing environments according to each company's specific applications, processes, and research goals. Brian Ritchie, president and chief executive officer of Blackstone, said, "This funding is a major milestone for Blackstone, and illustrates the excellent opportunity for our software and services. It provides strong validation of our model for applying our broad life sciences consulting expertise to software that dramatically improves computing productivity for our clients." David J. Parker, General Partner of Ampersand Ventures, stated: "Blackstone's combination of domain knowledge and specialised software for high-throughput computing environments will be a key market differentiator. Computing for life sciences is in incredibly high demand, and continues to grow at a very rapid pace. Blackstone is well positioned to make its software and services an indispensable solution for within the life sciences field. We also see applicability of Blackstone's technology in other fields that are computationally intensive, including semiconductor design, fluid dynamics and financial services."
Ad Emmen |
 |