Pivotal bioVenture Partners has closed a $389m fund, designated as ‘Fund II’, that will go towards growing North America and Europe-based drug development and healthcare innovation companies across various market stages.
Fund II is the sequel to the VC firm’s inaugural investment of $300m in 2017, which was exclusively allocated towards early stage biotechs. The investment, titled ‘Fund I’ was funded by Hong-Kong-based Nan Fung Group. The latest funds raise Pivotal’s total commitments to $689m.
As per the 18 December press release, Fund II will enable Pivotal to continue investing in differentiated and innovative therapeutics, as it did with Fund I, and comes with the added bonus of being sufficient to attract leaders in the field and drive company successes.
“We see this moment as a time of great opportunity in which our team’s historic focus on therapeutics with transformative potential in disease management matches where the biotech market has evolved over the past few years,” Pivotal Life Sciences’ managing general partner Peter Bisgaard said in the press release.
The San Francisco-based firm has contributed to the funding of projects by Aligos Therapeutics and Karuna Therapeutics and has also previously led financing rounds for companies such as Akouos Inc and Bolt Biotherapeutics. In the past year alone, the venture firm supported the biotech Evommune’s $50m Series B financing round for its pipeline programs in highly prevalent inflammatory diseases and also funded the $175m Series C round of biopharmaceutical company Avalyn Pharma to advance the development of lead clinical inhalation therapies AP01 and AP02.
In a 1 November press release, a separate fund Bioluminescence Ventures, announced that it would divide its $477m assets into two funds. In the announcement, the fund’s founding and managing partner Kouki Harasaki, PhD said, “The best way to help Founders and CEOs right now is to partner with them to secure strong syndicates and close rounds.” These funding announcements come at a time marked by layoffs and challenging restructurings.
Note: The sixth paragraph has been updated to reflect the nature of Bioluminescence Ventures’ funding strategy.
