Apr 30, 2020

Traction Guest

Phillips

Seattle-based Traction Guest hired Brian Phillips as director of global security strategy. Phillips has over 14 years of experience leading security operations at health care, life sciences and Fortune 500 companies. He previously led global security for Thermo Fisher Scientific. Prior to that, he developed Alexion Pharmaceuticals' first physical security program, which leverages technology to keep employees safe. Traction Guest operates a cloud-based visitor management service.

Avalyn Pharma

Seattle-based Avalyn Pharma secured $35.5 million in Series B financing led by Norwest Venture Partners. Others participating in the financing included Pivotal bioVenture Partners, F-Prime Capital, Novo Holdings, RiverVest Venture Partners and TPG Biotech. Concurrent with the financing, venture capitalists Dr. Robert Mittendorff of Norwest and Dr. Heather Preston of Pivotal joined Avalyn's board. Avalyn is working on therapeutic programs for pulmonary fibrosis and chronic lung allograft dysfunction.

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services opened data centers in Milan to boost cloud computing in Italy. In the Europe region, AWS also operates data centers in Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Paris and Stockholm. It plans to develop more in Indonesia, Japan and Spain. AWS is a company of Seattle-based Amazon.com.

Fresco Logic

Parade Technologies said it will acquire Portland-based Fresco Logic for $37.5 million in cash. Fresco is a fabless semiconductor company focusing on high-speed data transport and I/O aggregation chips and technology. San Jose, California-based Parade supplies integrated circuits for displays and high-speed interfaces used in computers and consumer electronics. The deal is expected to close during the second quarter of fiscal 2020.

Apr 29, 2020

Clearwater Analytics

Barkley

Boise, Idaho-based Clearwater Analytics hired Warren Barkley as chief technology officer. Barkley was general manager of the AWS Machine Learning Group at Amazon. Prior to that, he was general manager for business AI at Microsoft and CTO at Smart Technologies. He also holds over 60 worldwide patents in networking, wireless, communications and machine learning. James Price, Clearwater's former CTO, is now chief quality officer. Clearwater provides automated investment accounting and reporting for banks, insurance companies and other entities.

UW Continuum College

University of Washington Continuum College joined InStride's network of academic institutions. Through this partnership, Los Angeles-based InStride will connect its national and international corporate partners and their employees to UW Continuum College's online programs and courses.

LifeStance Health

In Bellevue, LifeStance Health brought on TPG Capital as an investor along with existing investors Summit Partners and Silversmith Capital Partners. The investors will provide capital to help LifeStance expand its outpatient behavioral health services across the U.S., both in-person and through telemedicine. The company has about 2,000 behavioral health clinicians in 200 offices and 15 states. TPG has offices around the world, with its closest in San Francisco. One of its focus areas is in health care.

MDU Resources Group

Bismarck, North Dakota-based MDU Resources Group is donating $500,000 to a number of organizations to support coronavirus relief efforts, including $24,500 to charities in Washington state, where its companies include Cascade Natural Gas, International Line Builders, Knife River Corp. and OEG. Some of the organizations receiving relief funds from MDU include the Bellingham Food Bank, Boys and Girls Clubs of Benton and Franklin Counties, Meals on Wheels in Richland and St. Vincent de Paul in Longview.