Good day. Eye injections are a fact of life for many patients with severe ocular diseases. In a new partnership, Re-Vana Therapeutics and Boehringer Ingelheim hope to at least reduce how often patients need to get them. 

Re-Vana, a U.S.- and U.K.- based startup that develops ocular therapeutics and drug-delivery technologies, and Boehringer, a pharmaceutical major, have struck a deal potentially worth over $1 billion to advance extended-release eye medicines that would require fewer injections than current treatments do.

Doctors treat conditions like the “wet” form of age-related macular degeneration with injections given around three to nine times a year, depending on the patient and the drug, said Michael O’Rourke, chief executive of Re-Vana. Re-Vana's technology enables biological and other types of drugs to be effective even when injected into the eye only once or twice a year, the company says.

“Patients want less frequent injections,” O’Rourke said.

Re-Vana uses a biodegradable hydrogel for sustained drug delivery in the eyes, enabling the medicines to be injected once every six or 12 months. The collaboration will apply Re-Vana’s delivery capabilities to medicines in Boehringer’s pipeline of eye-disease treatments.

Re-Vana, which will receive upfront and milestone payments plus royalties on drug sales, has raised about $18 million in venture capital from investors such as Visionary Ventures and ExSight Ventures. It is seeking an additional $40 million to fund its internal drug development, O’Rourke said.

And now on to the news...

IPO terms. Firefly Aerospace unveiled terms of a planned initial public offering that could give the space and defense technology company a market capitalization topping $5.5 billion. Firefly on Monday said it plans to sell 16.2 million shares at between $35 and $39 apiece in the IPO.

• At the $37 midpoint of that range, the Cedar Park, Texas, company said it expects net proceeds of about $557.8 million, or roughly $643 million if the underwriters exercise their option to buy an additional 2.43 million shares.
   
• Private-equity firm AE Industrial Partners, a defense and aerospace specialist that initially invested in Firefly in 2022, will still own more than 41% of the company after the IPO.

The private-equity industry has an opportunity to break into the $12.2 trillion U.S. defined-contribution industry. The Trump administration is planning executive action to allow more ordinary retirement savers to invest in private assets. The largest private-equity firms and retirement-plan managers are developing funds for this potential market, hoping the administration helps resolve the problems that have made companies unwilling to offer private funds in 401(k) plans. But the industry has another crucial problem to solve: how to fit high-cost private-equity funds into the low-margin business of managing retirement accounts.

How did two of the billionaire heirs to the Hyatt hotel fortune turned politicians get obsessed with a technology so complex that even the tech-savviest struggle to comprehend it? A little bit of hometown pride and a lot of optimism. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker are behind a statewide quantum computing push that’s beginning to take shape on Chicago’s south side.

Funds

Santa Barbara Venture Partners held the final close of its $25 million second fund.

People

645 Ventures promoted Vardan Gattani to investment partner. Before joining the firm in 2020, he was at Riot Ventures and AlleyCorp.

DataPelago, provider of a data processing engine for accelerated computing, appointed John “JG” Chirapurath as president. He was previously an executive vice president at SAP.

Salient, a San Francisco-based provider of AI-powered financial services technology, scored $60 million in funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz.

BlinkOps, an Austin, Texas-headquartered agentic security automation platform, closed a $50 million Series B round. O.G. Venture Partners led the investment, which included participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Hetz Ventures and Vertex Growth.

Cover Whale Insurance Solutions, an insurtech startup specializing in connected insurance for commercial trucking, picked up a $40 million investment from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital.

Dropzone AI, a Seattle-based provider of AI security operations center analysts, grabbed $37 million in Series B financing led by Theory Ventures.

Fable Security, a San Francisco-based human risk management platform that helps shape employee behavior, launched with $31 million in funding, including a $24.5 million Series A round led by Redpoint Ventures and a $6.5 million seed round led by Greylock Partners.

E2B, a San Francisco-based provider of open-source cloud infrastructure specifically designed for AI agents, raised $21 million in Series A funding led by Insight Partners.

Root Evidence, a Boise, Idaho-headquartered cybersecurity startup, was seeded with a $12.5 million investment led by Ballistic Ventures. 

Julius AI, a San Francisco-based AI-powered data analyst for knowledge workers, collected a $10 million seed investment from Bessemer Venture Partners, 8VC and others.

FluidCloud, a Pleasanton, Calif.-based portable cloud infrastructure provider, emerged from stealth with $8.1 million in seed funding led by Unusual Ventures.

Spear AI, a Washington, D.C.-headquartered developer of maritime AI technology, was seeded with a $2.3 million investment from Scare the Bear Capital and Cortical Ventures.

• Ryan Reynolds, Gwyneth Paltrow help Astronomer move on from Coldplay kiss cam

• Fintech billionaire beats co-founder in fight to keep voting superpowers

• Trump administration weighs patent system overhaul to raise revenue

• The high-schoolers who just beat the world’s smartest AI models

• Why you should use a password manager for all your secrets, not just logins

• Flexport sells former freight unicorn Convoy’s tech 2 years after buying it (TechCrunch)
   
• Seriously, why do some AI chatbot subscriptions cost more than $200? (Wired)
   
• Chinese universities want students to use more AI, not less (MIT Technology Review)

This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The Team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, Brian Gormley and Marc Vartabedian.

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