Tuesday’s round brings Bain Capital Life Sciences’ fundraising total to around $6.7 billion since its founding in 2016. Many of its portfolio companies have resulted in high-value exits recently, including Cerevel Therapeutics, Aiolos Bio and Jnana Therapeutics.
Bain Capital Life Sciences on Tuesday announced that it has raised approximately $3 billion for its fourth fund, which it will use to support promising companies working on addressing unmet medical needs and improving the lives of patients.
The bulk of Bain’s raise—approximately $2.5 billion—comes from “outside commitments” from new and existing investors. Partners, employees and affiliates pitched in the remaining $500 million.
Bain did not detail its investment priorities for its fourth fund, only noting that it will use this money to support biotech players developing “transformative medicines, medical devices, diagnostics, and life sciences tools that have the potential to improve the lives of patients with unmet medical needs.”
Tuesday’s round brings Bain’s fundraising total to around $6.7 billion since its founding in 2016, according to its announcement. Bain’s third funding round, closed in August 2021, brought in $1.9 billion, which the firm is using to back companies that it deems undervalued—and with an eye toward broadening its global presence, the company said at the time.
Bain’s investment strategy is overseen by more than 25 investment professionals and advisors, who leverage their “extensive” investing experience in the private and public domains, as well as deep operating, consulting, medical and scientific expertise.
This strategy appears to be working, with several of Bain’s portfolio firms enjoying high-value exits recently. In December 2023, Cerevel Therapeutics was bought by pharma giant AbbVie for $8.7 billion, a deal that formally closed in last month. Cerevel was working on psychiatric and neurological assets, including its late-stage next-generation antipsychotic emraclidine, being developed for schizophrenia.
A month after the AbbVie deal was announced, GSK bought another Bain portfolio company, Aiolos Bio, for $1.4 billion. The agreement bolsters the pharma’s respiratory and inflammatory business with Aiolos’ long-acting monoclonal antibody AIO-001 for moderate-to-severe asthma.
Joining Cerevel and Aiolos is Jnana Therapeutics, which was snapped up by Otsuka Pharmaceuticals last month for $800 million.
Bain’s fourth fund is among this year’s biggest. In July 2024, fellow investment firm Flagship Pioneering raised $3.6 billion to pump into around 25 new breakthrough companies, especially those that leverage AI-enabled platforms to optimize drug discovery and accelerate the development process. Flagship has raised a total of $6.4 billion since 2021.
