Sofinnova Partners has raised €1.2 billion ($1.26 billion) across its various investment strategies over the past year, the European life sciences investor said Tuesday morning, sharing its plans to put the money to work in startups across drug development, medtech, industrial biotech and digital medicine.
Most of the new money was secured in the fourth quarter, chairman Antoine Papiernik told
Endpoints News
. It now has €4 billion ($4.2 billion) in assets under management, double where the firm was five years ago, Papiernik said.
“In our history, we’ve never raised €1.2 billion in any time like this in a short period of time,” Papiernik said. “So that’s the main news for us, particularly in the time we are, which is quite difficult, globally speaking, for companies to fundraise but also for VCs.”
It helped that Sofinnova returned cash to its investors in the past 12 months, Papiernik said. “If you bring back cash to LPs, they take the meeting in general to hear what the story is for the new fund,” he said.
The new money will go toward the firm’s seven investment strategies, which cover the breadth of life sciences funding, from startup incubation all the way to later-stage growth rounds. The Paris, London and Milan firm has backed more than 500 companies since its 1972 inception. Papiernik has been at the firm since 1997.
Papiernik said he couldn’t disclose the breakdown of the money across the seven strategies because of regulatory reasons, but noted the final closings for each strategy will eventually be announced.
The firm has been behind companies like
Mablink Bioscience
(acquired by Eli Lilly),
CinCor
(bought by AstraZeneca) and
Shockwave Medical
(scooped up by Johnson & Johnson), among others.
A “bulk” of the firm’s investments go to biotech companies, with another 25% historically going to medtech, Papiernik said. About 70% goes toward European companies and the rest mainly toward the US. The firm is also interested in the growing biotech scene in China, Papiernik said.
The firm is using artificial intelligence to mine through its five decades of proprietary data on tens of thousands of deals that they’ve seen, Papiernik said. They’ve also added in public data into their AI program, which is named Sofia. The moniker is a play on Sofinnova and AI in French, plus it means wisdom in Greek. It was also developed internally by a Greek Sofinnova employee, he added.
“Today, any deals that come in, benefits from the 50 years of knowledge that is in Sofinnova,” the chair said.
Europe’s life sciences scene attracted additional interest last year, with new pools of capital at firms like
Forbion
,
Kurma Partners
,
Earlybird Health
,
Asabys
and others. This year, a handful have announced raises or plans to add funds, including $428 million for
Aditum Bio
and another $340 million at
Curie.Bio
. 8VC, which also invests in tech more broadly, is planning
a $1 billion fund
.