On April 7, 2021, Pendulum Therapeutics. a microbial company in Silicon Valley, closed its Series C round. West Fountain, an overseas parallel fund of West Fountain Parallel Fund, invested jointly with Shenzhen Capital Group. Meritech Capital Partners led the investment, and other investors included Sequoia America, Mayo Medical Center, True Venture, Khosla Venture, and AME Cloud Ventures. Pendulum raised $54 million for this round, totaling $111 million to date.

Pendulum is a new generation of microbial pharmaceutical companies in the Silicon Valley. In the Game Changing Startups 2020 released by CB Insights, the company was selected as one of the three companies in microbiology category. The company uses next-generation gene sequencing technology to establish an R&D platform for microbial genomes and functional maps to develop new microbial therapies for different diseases. This San Francisco-based biotechnology company was founded in 2013 by three scientists, Colleen Cutcliffe, James Bullard, and John Eid, each with a deep background in microbiology, biochemistry, gene sequencing, computing, and clinical expertise.

In 2020, Pendulum launched the first and only clinical-grade probiotic product that can reduce the peak blood glucose and A1C level of type 2 diabetic patients—Pendulum Glucose Control (PGC). PGC contains specific strains that can help diabetic patients rebuild the intestinal flora. This probiotic product can help metabolize fiber to produce butyric acid in the patient's body. This short-chain fatty acid plays an important role in regulating insulin secretion and stabilizing blood sugar levels and can be used at the same time with the blood sugar control drug metformin.

Dr. Colleen Cutcliffe, Co-founder and CEO of Pendulum, said: "We are grateful for our customers and investors’ continuing to support for our pioneering research on the microbiome. Pendulum is formed by a team of industry scientists. We will adopt a direct-to-consumer approach to provide high-quality products that are rigorously tested and scientifically verified. This round of funding will be used to develop the production and sales of PGC products, accelerate the product pipeline for other chronic diseases, and conduct other studies (including clinical trials) to further prove the company’s belief that microbes are the most exciting and promising field in the health and nutrition sciences."

Meritech partner Craig Sherman said, “We think Pendulum is a next-generation pharmaceutical company engaged in next-generation gene sequencing. Pendulum is likely to become the next 10x Genomics, Datadog, Snowflake or Roblox. Pendulum has created something truly different and possible Truly change a person’s life."

West Fountain Parallel Fund believes that Pendulum led a new generation of gene sequencing technology to the field of microbes, bringing new possibilities for human microbiome research and therapeutic applications. We believe that Pendulum, under an excellent management team and with the help of the world's top investment institutions, will definitely create value for the world's microbiology and medical fields.