Veteran venture capital firm venBio has raised another half a billion dollars to invest in biotechs working on diseases with unmet needs. The $528 million raised for “Fund V” lines up nicely with the $550 million brought in for its fourth fund in 2021 and once again surpasses the comparatively paltry $394 million raised in 2020.
Fundraising for the VC's fifth life sciences fund began mid-April, with investors coming from diverse walks of life, including sovereign wealth funds, corporate pensions, financial institutions, university endowments, medical institutions, foundations, family offices and funds-of-funds.
Like in previous funds, the San Francisco-based firm is interested in investing across all stages of clinical development, so long as there will be meaningful data within three to five years.
“In structuring Fund V, our primary goal was to maintain consistency in our strategy, core team and investment discipline,” managing partner Richard Gaster, M.D., Ph.D. said in an Aug. 1 release.
Founded in 2011, venBio has invested in over 40 companies, including many that have been acquired or gone public. Examples include Aragon Pharmaceuticals and Seragon Pharmaceuticals, which were acquired by Johnson & Johnson and Roche, respectively, plus radiopharma RayzeBio, which went public before being acquired by Bristol Myers Squibb for $4.1 billion in December 2023.