Louis Lehot

Domain experience in public offerings and private placements of equity, equity-linked, and debt securities, mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, spinoffs, strategic investments, and joint ventures. Excels in cross-border deals, having represented public and private clients in the US and globally.

Regularly represents US and non-US registrants before the SEC, FINRA, NYSE and NASDAQ. Admitted to practice in California and New York. Fluent in French and English.

Also advises entrepreneurs and their management teams, investors and financial advisors at all stages of growth, applying a broad array of legal and business processes and strategies. Guides emerging private companies as they secure venture capital financing, prepare for IPO or de-SPAC, and navigate the exit.

Louis especially enjoys being able to help his clients achieve hyper-growth, go public and successfully obtain optimal liquidity events.

Previously recognized by The Legal 500 US in the fields of mergers & acquisitions/corporate and commercial. Identified as a California leader in Capital Markets: Debt & Equity, Chambers USA (2012 – 2015). Two-time faculty member at the world-renowned Stanford Directors’ College.

Louis has been ranked in Chambers USA for four consecutive years from 2021-2024 in the Venture Capital practice.

ABA Business Law Committee, Subcommittee on Negotiated Acquisitions. Association of Corporate Counsel, Bay Area Corporate and Securities Law Committee. Silicon Valley Association of General Counsel.

Representative Experience*

Mergers, Acquisitions, and Joint Ventures

Louis regularly represents buyers in creating innovative acquisition programs, smart structures, and smooth processes to acquire businesses by share purchase, merger, asset purchase, and license. He represents bootstrapped as well as venture-backed startups in achieving lucrative liquidity events for their entrepreneurs and investors. Representative matters include:

Representing Matterport (Nasdaq: MTTP) in its sale to CoStar Group (NYSE: CSTR) for cash and stock valued at over $2.1 billion, including an FTC-led antitrust review

Represented Archimed, a leading global healthcare private equity fund, in the buyouts of skincare platform Cellese and wound irrigation platform Irrimax

Represented Bhuma, an AI-enabled no-code devops business backed by First Rays Venture, Westwave, Neotribe and The AI Fund in its sale to IBM

Represented Wine Access (Norwest portfolio company) in its sale to Full Glass Wine Co.

Represented Transgrid Energy in the acquisition of industrial scale renewable energy assets

Represented Riverwood Capital in its buyout of Forecast5 Analytics, leveraged financing, and bolt-on acquisitions (sold to Frontline, a portfolio company of Thoma Bravo)

Represented Riverwood Capital in its sale of Supply Chain Research Group to Argosy Capital

Represented the League App, Inc. in its sale to Match Group (NASDAQ: MTCH)

Represented Vcheck Global in its sale to funds affiliated with Sunstone Partners

Represented Zonehaven, the SAAS solution for emergency evacuation and community support, in its sale to Genasys (NASDAQ: GNSS), the critical communications systems and solutions company.

Represented Flurosat, a crop science company, in its all-stock acquisition of a soil health startup Dagan to form Regrow Agriculture, focusing on resilient agriculture solutions

Represented doc.ai Incorporated, a digital health transformation company, in negotiating strategic investment, commercial and licensing deals with Anthem and its subsequent 2021 sale to Sharecare and de-SPAC merger with Falcon Capital Acquisition Corp.

Represented 174 Power Global, the power project development arm of Hanwha Energy Corp., in negotiating a joint venture with Total SE to develop utility-scale solar and energy storage projects of 1.6 W cumulative capacity in North America

Venture Capital & Growth Equity

Louis’s clients include venture capital, growth equity investment firms, and corporate venturing groups that make minority investments in technology, health care, clean energy, and other innovative businesses, including:

Represented SoftBank Vision Fund in growth equity investments in Zymergen, Alto Pharmacy, Wag Labs, Slack, Guardant Health, 99 Taxis, and 10X Genomics

Represented Riverwood Capital in growth equity investments in Alation, BigID, Degreed, Druva, CloudVirga, One Model, Sauce Labs, SpyCloud

Represented TCG Crossover in late-stage emerging life sciences investments in Affinia Therapeutics, Aviceda Therapeutics, Entrada, AdarX, Artios, Versanis, Alkeus, Tourmaline Bio (and its concurrent merger ith Talaris Therapeutics), Inhibrx, Pathys and others, as well as private investments into public entities and royalty dealsincluding Abivax, Adverum Bio, Compass Pathways Mineralys Therapeutics, Silence Therapeutics and more.

Represented Bioluminescence Ventures in making emerging life sciences investments into Cellarity, Tessera Therapeutics, Nido Biopharma, Catalog Technologies and others

Represented Vivo Capital in growth equity investments in Maculogix, Harmony Biosciences, and Green River, to name a few

Represented NEA in seed and follow-on investments in Robinhood (IPO), ScoutRFP (sold to Workday), Automation Anywhere (largest Series A transaction ever at US$265m), FightCamp, Evernow, AI2, Embrace Mobile, Weaviate, Slash, Regression Games, Fabric8 Labs, Modyfi, Fizz Social, Kindred Concepts, FloxDev, Nordsense, Arris, Orby AI, Comanche Biopharma, Sorriso Pharma and dozens of other transactions for over 15 years.

Represented Samsung Ventures in dozens of early- to late-stage investments in technology, health care, and life science businesses, managing the portfolio and subsequent monetization transactions

Represented LG Technology Ventures in its initial fund formation and in over a dozen early- to late- stage investments in technology businesses

Represented Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Foundation Capital, General Atlantic, Nautilus Venture Partners, Oak Investment Partners, Propel Ventures, and numerous other venture capital firms in making early- to late-stage venture capital investments in technology, life sciences, med-tech, med- device, health care, and clean energy businesses

Emerging Growth Companies

Over his more than 25-year career, Louis has represented emerging growth companies from garage to global in all stages, from formation to liquidity, including:

Represented App0 (enterprise SAAS communications platform backed by Cota Capital)

Represented BankJoy (fintech) backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, CheckALT and SoftBank Opportunity Fund)

Represented Bhuma (dev-ops no-code software platform backed by First Rays Venture Capital, Westwave, Neotribe, and The AI Fund)

Represented Bionure (life sciences)

Represented Burq (API integration backed by MANTIS Venture Capital, Alumni Ventures, s16vc and One Way Ventures)

Represented Centric Software (PLM enterprise SAAS software backed by Dassault Systemes and Oak Investment Partners)

Represented CheckALT (fintech, backed by Shai Stern)

Represented Design Barn, Inc., the creator of Lottie Files (a multiplatform animation creation tool backed by Square Peg, XYZ Ventures, Greatpoint Ventures, M12, Adobe, and 500 Global)

Represented Gatik AI (autonomous delivery backed by FM Capital, KDT Ventures, Endeavor)

Represented GoodData (enterprise SAAS, backed by General Catalyst, a16z, Intel Capital, and Visa Ventures)

Represented Instock, customer fulfillment robotics company (backed by Amazon, One Way Ventures, Lux Capital, Commerce VC, u.ventures, Cynernetix Ventures and others)

Represented Mexican fintech Kapital in its Series B financing led by Tribe and Pelion

Fund Formation

In recent years, Louis has worked with financial sponsors and general partners to create investment funds targeted at deploying capital in tech, healthcare, life sciences and clean energy ventures, including:

Bioluminescence Ventures in structuring and fund formation, leading to its emergence from stealth with $477 million in assets under management

TDK Ventures, in structuring and executing a multi-LP fund focused on energy disruption and another fund focused on investing in India

Mighty Capital, the San Francisco based fund that is a “go-to” for product-first companies, in all three of its funds

Outlierz, an Africa-focused Seed venture capital firm focused on backing outstanding technology founders solving Africa’s most pressing challenges and re-inventing the continent’s future

Public Company Representation

Avnet, Inc. (NASDAQ: AVT)

CHC Helicopter (NYSE: HELI)

CSR plc (NASDAQ: CSR), sold to Qualcomm

Dasan Zhone Solutions (NASDAQ: DZSI)

Hanwha Q Cells (NASDAQ: QCELLS)

Matterport (NASDAQ: MTTP)

Seagate Technology (NASDAQ: STX)

SiRF Technology Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRF)

STMicroelectronics NV (NYSE: STM), Technip, Rhodia, Orange and many more

Capital Markets Transactions

Represented doc.ai and founders in combination with Sharecare and Falcon Capital Acquisition Corp. in a de-SPAC’ing transaction (2021)

Represented SoftBank as selling holder in Slack’s direct listing (2019)

Represented SoftBank as selling holder in 10x Genomics’ IPO (2019)

Represented SoftBank as selling holder in Guardant Health’s IPO and follow-on offerings (2018)

Represented CHC Group, Ltd. in its IPO (2014)

Convertible Notes, Investment Grade and High Yield Bond Offerings

Represented GLG Partners in private placements of convertible bonds (2009)

Represented Micron Technology in public offerings of convertible bonds (2007 and 2009)

Represented the underwriters in POSCO’s offering of exchangeable bonds (2008)

Recent Experience

Represented OpenLight Photonics, Inc., a silicon photonics company focused on integrated photonic platforms for optical interconnects, in its Series Au20111 preferred stock financing, a followu2011on round to the companyu2019s Series A.

Represented Samsung Ventures in connection with its investment in the Series C preferred stock financing of XBow Holding, Inc., a technology company operating in the advanced computing and infrastructure space.

Represented Origin Ventures, a venture capital firm, in its Series Seed preferred stock investment in Century Health Technology, Inc., a healthu2011technology company focused on datau2011driven healthcare solutions.

Boston College Law School

JD

Georgetown University School of Foreign Service

BSFS

Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Strasbourg

CEP