Intuitive Ventures, the investment arm of Intuitive Surgical Inc., closed a $150 million fundraising round for its second fund, which will focus on investments in startups in three areas: precision diagnostics and interventions, digital ecosystems and improving health care access and coordination. Intuitive Surgical’s first venture fund raised $100 million that has been used to support more than 10 early-stage companies.
Venture Capital firm Sofinnova Partners has launched Sofinnova.AI, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform that it hopes will transform its approach to life sciences investment. The platform harnesses billions of data points spanning scientific literature, emerging therapeutic fields, and technological breakthroughs, and connects them with the firm’s own proprietary knowledge accumulated over 50 years.
Seismic Therapeutic Inc. has closed a $121 million series B financing to support progression of the company’s two lead programs through clinical proof of mechanism.
Regenerative medicine company Mesoblast Ltd. plans to raise AU$97 million (US$64.5 million) to conduct additional phase III registration trials for its allogeneic stem cell treatment for steroid-refractory acute graft-vs.-host disease and for chronic back pain, as required by the U.S. FDA.
For biopharma, the 2023 post-pandemic reality check has been harsh, replete with sagging stock prices, bankruptcy filings and restructurings, as well as IPOs at their lowest levels in a decade. The good news, according to a handful of industry experts, is that it could be coming to an end, possibly as early as 2024.