Mineral and Financial Investments Ltd (M&FI) has provided an update on its investee company, Ideon Technologies Inc, which has received a US$16.0mln new equity injection.
Ideon, in which M&FI holds 1.4% on a fully diluted basis of the issued shared capital, has received US$15.0mln from venture capital firm, Playground Global Fund III, giving it approximately 20% of the company.
Based on the valuation from this financing by Playground, M&FI's investment in Ideon is worth roughly £874,500. M&FI's original investment was made in June 2020, and it has participated with top-up investments in all of Ideon's subsequent capital raises.
M&FI said it was advised that the proceeds of this equity raise will be used by Ideon for general corporate purposes.
Ideon is a world pioneer in the application of cosmic-ray muon tomography, according to a M&FI statement, and its Discovery Platform can provide x-ray-like visibility up to 1 kilometre beneath the earth's surface.
The Discovery Platform can identify and image anomalies including mineral and metal deposits, air voids, caves and other structures with density properties that contrast with the surrounding earth.
Playground has had 11 investment ‘exits,’ with many of them being ‘Unicorn’ ones, where company valuations in excess of US$1bn, which include Relativity, Fabric, PsiQuantum, Branch, Cruise, Next Silicon and Virta Health.
Playground’s investment strategy is to invest capital into companies with concepts in deep technology sectors and “ game-changing” enterprise products.