Vensana Capital has set a high bar for its second medtech-focused venture fund. Its first, established in 2019, brought in $225 million, which it proceeded to dole out to a total of 10 startups developing devices, diagnostics, artificial intelligence platforms and more.
The second fund promises to be even bigger and better. It closed with an oversubscribed $325 million, with contributors comprising a mix of the first fund’s backers and a handful of new institutional investors. Members of that group went unnamed, but comprise public pensions, university endowments, foundations, leading academic health systems, family offices and funds-of-funds, Vensana said at the close of its inaugural fund.
In conjunction with the expansion of its investment power, Vensana has also added to its leadership team. Mike Kramer recently joined the roster as a venture partner after several years at healthcare investment firm CRG, following stints in the C-suites of devicemakers including Endologix, TriVascular and ATS Medical.
Amrinder Singh, meanwhile, joined Vensana as a principal this month, after nearly a decade at Medtronic that culminated in about four years spent as senior director of venture capital.
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Vensana Capital II will enable the VC firm to significantly scale up its investments in medtechs in both the development and commercial stage. Within the sector, Vensana is particularly interested in backing startups building medical devices, diagnostics and research tools, as well as digital health and other software platforms.
The first 10 companies in its portfolio included Intact Vascular, which makes a device to treat peripheral artery disease and was purchased by Philips for $360 million in 2020; CVRx, which took its heart failure-targeting neurostimulation device public this summer via IPO; and Cleerly, which uses AI to analyze plaque build-up in the coronary arteries, and was recently tapped by Canon Medical Systems to build an all-in-one cardiac CT imaging platform.
“Medical technology innovations have the ability to dramatically improve healthcare quality and outcomes while simultaneously reducing costs. We believe Vensana has both a tremendous opportunity and a responsibility to support our entrepreneurs in their pursuit of technologies and businesses that will transform healthcare for the future,” said Managing Partner Justin Klein, M.D.
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With the close of its second fund, Vensana joins a wave of other venture funders that have recently raked in hundreds of millions to pour into medtech makers.
This year alone, Illumina, CVS Health, Livongo incubator 7wireVentures and Endeavour Vision have all closed nine-figure funds, topped by the latter’s $375 million allotment to support companies working to translate their newly developed technologies for use in the eventual post-pandemic world.