Archus Orthopedics, Spine Device Maker that Raised $60M, Shuts Down Amid Cash Crunch
Archus Orthopedics, the Redmond, WA-based developer of implants to help people retain flexibility after back surgery, is shutting down its operations and dissolving after it was unable to raise enough capital to bring the product all the way to the U.S. market, Xconomy has learned.
Archus filed paperwork with the Delaware Secretary of State to dissolve the company and wind down the business, according to a legal notice on The Seattle Times website. Archus CEO Jim Fitzsimmons, reached by phone, said he had no comment.
We broke the story back in May about financial troubles at Archus, which had been one of the rising stars in the Seattle medical device industry for years. The company had a veteran medical device entrepreneur in Fitzsimmons as CEO, and raised more than $63 million in equity since its founding 2001 from a group of big-name venture firms—MPM Capital, InterWest Partners, Polaris Venture Partners, and Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation, as well as a loan from GE Capital. Cash ran low this spring when Archus was sponsoring a big clinical trial of 450 patients, and it was forced to lay off most of its 45 employees. In the last few months, it tried to find a partner or some other way to finish the clinical trials it needed to start marketing its experimental device.
If I am the one of the named investors, I am pissed off! I understand the cost of validating and testing, and also an IDE, yet, how do you burn through more than $65 million, remember the bridge financing? Eight years later no revenue? So where are the skeletons? Everyone was having a party at the expense of other people's capital. I guess everyone thought that the good times would never end.
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The FIFTH with many more to come.
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