The new fund brings Pivotal bioVenture Partners’ total capital to $689 million, which the venture capital firm intends to pump into young biotechs developing “innovative and impactful therapeutics.”
Pictured: San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge/iStock, bloodua
San Francisco–based venture capital firm Pivotal bioVenture Partners announced Monday it has closed its second fund, counting $389 million in capital commitments to support the development of novel medicines.
In particular, Pivotal will channel its finds into young companies based in North America and Europe that are working on “innovative and impactful therapeutics,” according to the firm’s press release. The second fund will also help “attract talented leaders” who can steer these companies, guide their growth and help establish them in key therapeutic areas.
“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,” Peter Bisgaard, managing general partner at Pivotal Life Sciences, said in a statement.
Monday’s sum is $89 million higher than its first fund, which it closed in March 2017. Taken together, Pivotal now has a total aggregate capital commitment of $689 million, which it can use to support companies across all stages—from seed to publicly listed—with a particular preference for opportunities where it can lead or co-lead investments and work alongside businesspeople to build the company.
In an interview with Endpoints News, Bisgaard and managing general partner Rob Hopfner said Pivotal is already backing a next-generation gene therapy developer.
The second bioVenture Partners fund will also leverage the capabilities of its parent company Pivotal Life Sciences, which uses creative financing avenues, including private and public funding, to support companies in the life sciences field. Specifically, Pivotal will apply the latest advancements in data analytics and artificial intelligence to guide its investments, according to the press release.
The Pivotal portfolio includes the neurology biotech Karuna Therapeutics, gene therapy developer Twist Bioscience, AI-powered drugmaker Exscientia and vaccine developer Vaxcyte.
Monday’s announcement comes as the biopharma industry looks forward to a “healthy” degree of mergers, acquisitions and dealmaking activity in general in 2024. According to a recent report from professional services firm PwC, the industry can expect dealmaking to mostly normalize to pre-pandemic levels next year—similar to how it did this year.
In particular, companies in the oncology and immunology spaces will see high activity, especially those focused on precision medicine development, according to PwC. Similarly, the report notes that players in the weight loss and cardiovascular diseases space are also likely to enjoy heightened investor interest in 2024.
Despite these positive projections, however, biopharma will still have to grapple with the volatility of geopolitical tensions and regulatory uncertainty, along with the “reality of higher interest rates,” PwC said. As a result, many companies will need to seek more creative funding opportunities to support their R&D activities, including private equity and credit, as well as profit-sharing deals.
Tristan Manalac is an independent science writer based in Metro Manila, Philippines. He can be reached at tristan@tristanmanalac.com or tristan.manalac@biospace.com.
Correction (December 19): Peter Bisgaard’s title has been updated from managing general partner to managing director. BioSpace regrets the error.
