Aiolos Bio, Inc.

Sofinnova Investments, one of the longest-standing biotech investment firms, has penciled in plans for a new $550 million fund, Endpoints News has learned. The Menlo Park, CA-based firm disclosed the plans in a Thursday night SEC filing . A spokesperson for the firm declined to comment on Friday. The new raise would join other large new funds from Flagship, Bain Capital Life Sciences , ARCH, Forbion , Dimension and Atlas Venture , among others this year. Leading Sofinnova are James Healy and Maha Katabi , both of whom have been on boards of multiple acquired biotechs in recent quarters. “The deal flow — it’s never been any better. Probably that’s a function of how public markets have corrected,” Katabi told Endpoints in February. “A lot more companies are interested in exploring more fully the availability of capital in private markets before going down the IPO path.” Sofinnova was on a roll with its most recent fund, called XI. That fund came in at $500 million , according to an SEC filing, about $150 million below its 2016 fund . The new fund is listed as fund XII. Multiple startups backed by fund XI went public via IPOs in the past two years, including RayzeBio, ArriVent , Rapport, and BioAge Labs. RayzeBio was quickly bought by Bristol Myers Squibb, and fellow portfolio company Aiolos Bio was also acquired by GSK. Sofinnova has backed ambitious projects and contributed to a bevy of large financings with XI. At least half a dozen companies from that fund raised megarounds this year. That includes BioAge, epilepsy and pain biotech Axonis , ADC startup OnCusp , cardiometabolic company Marea , in vivo CAR-T maker Capstan , Athena Countouriotis’ Avenzo and neuroscience biotech Seaport, which has raised two nine-figure financings this year. “If I look over our current funds, over the past two funds in particular or past five years, our average time to IPO is less than a year,” Healy told Endpoints in a September interview. “I would hope that Seaport would fit within our investment [strategy], and it would be outstanding if it could follow the trajectory that Karuna had. But of course, no guarantees.” He was on the board of schizophrenia drugmaker Karuna when BMS bought it for $14 billion. Many of the Karuna team is back together for their next bet on neuroscience at Seaport. The firm began in 1976 and has focused on biopharmaceuticals since 2007 . It had $3.7 billion in assets under management and committed capital as June 30. In August, it announced the addition of Maha Radhakrishnan as executive partner.

Dive Brief:Atlas Venture said Thursday that its raised $450 million for its 14th fund, through which the firm will continue to seed and grow new biotechnology companies.Partner Bruce Booth called the fundraising round the smoothest and most efficient hes seen in 20 years at the firm. Given the level of demand, we could have raised several multiples of what we set as our hard cap of $450 million, Booth wrote in a blog post.Booth, Kevin Bitterman, Michael Gladstone, David Grayzel and Jason Rhodes are the investing partners in Atlas new fund. Jean-Franois Formela, who joined Atlas in 1993 to build up its life science franchise and initiated biotech investing at the firm, decided to stop making new investments and instead will focus on his current portfolio and other duties at Atlas.Dive Insight:Investor confidence in biotechnology is recovering after a significant dropoff in recent years. And 2024 has seen a number of multibillion-dollar fundraises from venture capital firms, including Arch Venture Partners, Flagship Pioneering, Bain Capital Life Sciences and Forbion.But Atlas, one of the most prominent early-stage biotech investors, is purposely keeping its funds relatively small, according to Booth. The firm has some scar tissue from growing too fast in the early part of the century, when it invested in tech as well as biotech companies. Atlas is now determined to stay disciplined and focused on the model that we continue to try to perfect: seed-led venture creation, he wrote.A modest fund size better allows the firm to be dynamic and adaptive and gives a better chance of success in early-stage biotech investing, Booth wrote. We want to remain company builders focused on disciplined capital allocation and driving superlative returns, and resist the temptation to become asset aggregators in order to absorb higher fees, he added.The model has worked well for Atlas over the last two years, as the firm launched 16 new biotech companies and saw several startups in its portfolio achieve significant milestones.Versanis, Aiolos Bio, Mariana Oncology and an immune disease drug developed by Nimbus Therapeuticswere all acquired. Four other companies went public and another Day One Biopharmaceuticals got its first regulatory approval for a drug.Atlas has invested in more than 30 fundraising rounds by biotech startups since the beginning of 2022, according to data compiled by BioPharma Dive. All told, Atlas portfolio companies have almost 50 clinical trials underway. The firm last closed one of its own funds in 2022, raising $450 million. '

Atlas Venture, one of biotech’s go-to VC firms, is eyeing a $450 million 14th fund, partner Bruce Booth said in its annual review presentation. In the review, recorded on Nov. 7 and posted online Monday, Booth said the “key theme” for Fund XIV is “discipline.” “We’ve chosen to actually come to market with the exact same-sized fund as we raised in Fund XIII, $450 million,” Booth said, referencing the investor’s 2022 raise . “This was the product of a deep strategic and analytical review of, how do you generate outsized returns with our strategy and have a lot of conviction that this is the right fund size for us.” The new fund has already received commitments: The University of Alabama System’s investment committee approved $8.5 million for the new fund, Crain’s Pensions & Investments reported on Nov. 11. In an email to Endpoints News on Monday morning, Booth said there are “no filings or updates on timing at this stage” regarding the fund. Atlas had progressively increased the size of its last few funds, raising $280 million for a 10th fund in 2015, $350 million in 2017, $400 million in 2020 and then $450 million in 2022. Atlas has been quite active this year and has disclosed investments in about a dozen private biotechs , according to the presentation. One of those, obesity biotech Kailera Therapeutics , secured one of the industry’s largest private funding rounds in 2024. About 10 more investments have been made in companies that haven’t yet come out of stealth mode, Booth said during the video. It’s generated a few exits as well. Pharma companies have bought its portfolio startups Aiolos Bio , IFM Due and Mariana Oncology . Its portfolio of 56 companies has 147 programs in the pipeline, according to the presentation. That includes almost 50 in the clinic. About 50% of its portfolio is small molecules, 20% cell and gene therapies, 20% biologics and 10% oligonucleotides, according to the presentation. Rare disease comprises the biggest share at 36%, followed by oncology at 31%. Venture creation is the “vast majority of the deals” that Atlas works on, Booth said, noting the firm doesn’t plan to grow much organizationally and will continue to be “science-first investors.” It added 18 new portfolio companies in 2023 and 2024, and deployed $420 million over that time. Atlas joins a chorus of other industry investors in putting together new pools of capital this year, including Bain’s life sciences team, ARCH Venture Partners and more than three dozen others, according to an Endpoints tally.