Money Moves: Check out these Philly-area fall funding deals and potential IPOs

Money Moves is a column where we chart the funding raises of tech companies across the region. Have a tip? Email us at philly@technical.ly.

In this last quarter of 2020, we’ve spotted some Greater Philadelphia funding moves — including IPO plans — happening in the software, life science and finance arenas. Check them out:

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Palladio Biosciences, a five-year-old clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that develops medicines for kidney diseases, recently announced that it had raised a Series B round of fundraising for $20 million.

CEO Alex Martin said the Horsham-based company is focusing on developing its lead candidate, lixivaptan, for the treatment of ADPKD, an orphan disease that can impact many generations of a family.

The financing was led by new investor Samsara BioCapital and included participation from another new investor, Roche Venture Fund. Existing investors Medicxi and Osage University Partners also participated. Proceeds from the financing will fund Palladio’s Phase 3 ALERT Study, which is designed to assess the safety of the drug in ADPKD patients who showed liver chemistry abnormalities or other signs of liver toxicity while taking tolvaptan, the only drug currently approved in the U.S. for the treatment of ADPKD.

“We are very pleased that Samsara and the Roche Venture Fund recognize the opportunity lixivaptan represents to patients suffering from ADPKD, and we are glad to be working with these new partners to further develop this important therapy,” said Francesco De Rubertis, cofounder and partner at Medicxi, in a statement.

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Center City-based biotech firm Enterin, which is developing drugs that treat neurodegenerative brain disorders like Parkinson’s, has raised $14.2 million in a Series C, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported. The company is hoping to get to $20 million, with a goal of funding ongoing and new studies of its drug candidates.

Enterin raised $50 million since its start in 2017, and the round was led by existing investors Indie Assets and New Venture Partners and also included “several high-wealth individuals,” per PBJ. The round will help the 14-person company complete two mid-stage clinical trials on a Parkinson’s drug.

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Exton, Pennsylvania-based software company Bentley Systems, which specializes in software for construction projects, announced its plans to raise $215 million in a projected IPO last month. It planned to offer 10.75 million shares of common stock — only those already owned by its employees, a unique move aimed at rewarding them with liquidity — at $22 per share. The shares began trading under the symbol “BSY” on Sept. 23 and as of Monday were trading around $32.

In June, the company also announced that it had acquired NoteVault, the San Diego-based maker of voice-based field automation for construction management.

Bentley Systems was founded by a group of brothers out of the University City Science Center in 1986. When former Science Center President and CEO Stephen Tang accepted the Visionary of the Year Award on behalf of the Science Center at the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business Excellence Awards in 2015, he shouted out the Bentleys as one of the incubators biggest success stories to date.

Find open engineering roles at the company here.

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And last week, Dresher, Pennsylvania-based Ascensus, a 40-year-old company that services savings plans for financial institutions, governments and companies, hired investment banks to prep for its own IPO, Reuters reported. The IPO could be valued around $3 billion, including debt, sources told Reuters, and the IPO wouldn’t take place until mid-2021.

The company’s website said it has more than $327 billion of assets under administration and over 12 million Americans with savings accounts through its business. Ascensus also plans to role out a new digital sales platform before the end of 2020.

Find open IT and D&I positions here.