On Monday, Carlyle Group, the global private equity and credit investor that manages $246 billion in client assets, announced that it is buying Unchained Labs, a Pleasanton, California-based manufacturer of life science tools, for $435 million. The sellers are Novo Holdings A/S, the holding company of Danish biotech and insulin maker Novo Nordisk, venture capital fund Canaan Partners, and TPG Biotech, the $870 million science venture capital arm of private equity investor TPG.
Founded in 2015, Unchained Labs makes technology systems and equipment for biologics and gene therapy researchers, to analyze and characterize large, complex molecules. The firm expects to generate over $75 million in revenue this year. Equity capital for the investment came from Carlyle Partners VII, an $18.5 billion fund that makes majority and strategic minority investments primarily in the U.S. in targeted industries, including healthcare.
“This is a great day in the history of Unchained Labs,” said Tim Harkness, Unchained Labs Founder and CEO, in a statement on the acquisition. “The Unchained team has solved a ton of problems for researchers over the past few years, but we are just beginning to scratch the surface of the biologics and gene therapy opportunity. I am thrilled to welcome Carlyle as our new partner! They have the team, the vision, the conviction, the experience, and the capital to help us accelerate organic and inorganic growth and realize our full potential. I have never been more optimistic about our future and I am truly excited about joining Carlyle for the next part of our journey.”
Tools
“Unchained Labs sits at the intersection of one of the most attractive sectors in healthcare, life science tools, and its fastest growing end market, biopharma,” said Carlyle’s Global Head of Healthcare, Steve Wise. “With strong industry tailwinds, we believe Unchained Labs has significant growth opportunities and we’re excited to support another founder-backed business to scale through investments in research and development, digitization and geographic expansion.”
“In the midst of the genomic revolution, Unchained Labs is on a mission to bring highly innovative products that are critical to drug development to researchers globally,” said Carlyle’s Robert Schmidt, a Managing Director specializing in healthcare investing. “We look forward to partnering with Tim and his impressive management team as they help their pharma and biotech customers work on critical scientific discoveries and accelerate the Company’s aggressive growth plans.”
Carlyle’s investment in Unchained Labs is a continuation of its long-term global commitment to healthcare, in which it has invested more than $16 billion of equity since inception.
