Foresite Capital Raises $969m to Keep Investing in Promising Healthtech Companies

Foresite Capital, a multi-stage healthcare and life sciences investment firm, announced on February 25th it has closed its fifth and largest fundraise with $969 million in capital commitments, significantly oversubscribed above its original target. The offering comprises Foresite Capital Fund V, L.P. and Foresite Capital Opportunity Fund V, L.P. 

Investing in healthcare – a tremendous business opportunity

Spending related to healthcare is continuously increasing, and this represents a significant business opportunity for those companies that are leading healthcare innovation. 

According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), US health spending has already reached 3.3 trillion dollars in 2016 and is expected to increase 5.5% annually on average through 2026. This is why the top tech companies known as the Big Four – Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft – think healthcare presents a tremendous business opportunity, and they are not the only ones to invest in healthcare innovation.

MedTech investors believe that building opportunities is vital for many aspects of being a successful business, including ensuring future expansion and the ability to bounce back in a downturn, even if that means obtaining revenue below key estimates.

Foresite Capital now manages assets worth ~$4 billion 

With these new funds, Foresite Capital is investing in emerging healthcare and life sciences companies that promise to work towards solving some of the biggest inefficiencies and pain points of the $10 trillion global healthcare market. Foresite Capital now has ~$4 billion in assets under management.

Foresite Capital is a leader in healthcare and life sciences investing, having spent nearly a decade focused solely on the fastest growing and most transformational companies within the industry, including 10x Genomics, Element Biosciences, Lyell Immunopharma, Inscripta, Relay Therapeutics, Gemini Therapeutics, and more. Fund V builds upon the success of Foresite Capital’s $668M Fund IV and the previous three funds, which have generated more than 37 IPOs to-date. Among those is Kinnate Biopharma, which Foresite incubated and helped scale to IPO within three years. 

A decade of data and science-driven investing for Foresite Capital 

Foresite Capital has been established 10 years ago and has emphasized a rigorous, data and science-driven investment approach ever since. The company provides deep guidance and technical support to its portfolio clients using its extensive team of in-house former industry executives, data scientists, geneticists, and biomedical researchers. The 27 MDs and PhDs on its team ensure Foresite Capital can help the companies it invests in to push their products forward and make sure they have commercial success. 

In October 2019, Foresite Capital launched Foresite Labs, an incubator that builds and scales transformative companies at the intersection of data science and healthcare. Run by Dr. Vik Bajaj, the former chief scientific officer of GRAIL and the co-founder and former chief scientific officer of Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences), Foresite Labs aims to solve questions surrounding next-generation therapeutics and healthcare services to ultimately improve patient outcomes. Foresite Labs is now incubating five companies. 

Healthtech innovators are mainly what Foresite Capital invests in 

Every company Foresite Capital invests in is carefully selected and deserves attention. For instance, last year Foresite Capital was one of the investors which helped Mindstrong, a digital health company determined to transform mental health through innovations in virtual care models and digital measurement, raise $100 million in Series C fundraising. The Mountain View, California-based Mindstrong planed to use the money to scale its virtual mental healthcare and digital symptom measurement offering.

Another biotech firm Foresite Capital is investing in, genome editing company Inscripta, has bought life sciences firm, Solana Biosciences, two years ago, in a move meant to accelerate the commercialization of its suite of gene-editing technologies.

Many future healthcare brands will emerge from the COVID-19 crisis

Foresite Capital is led by CEO and founder, Dr. Jim Tananbaum. The firm recently expanded its leadership team, promoting Dr. Michael Rome and adding Alisa Mall as managing director. The new additions bring extensive experience from leading financial and life sciences organizations.

With Fund V, Foresite Capital plans to invest in companies, spanning all stages, that is focused on therapeutics, life science infrastructure, and individualized healthcare. Limited partners in Fund V include a broad range of investors, among them university endowments, public and private pension funds, insurance companies, foundations, corporate investors, and prominent individuals and families worldwide.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has put a spotlight on the vulnerability and inefficiency of our healthcare systems. We believe that many of the household healthcare brands of the future will emerge from this crisis, and Foresite Capital will be there to support them,” said Jim Tananbaum, founder and CEO of Foresite Capital. “We are excited to continue working with founders to build the future leaders of the health economy.

About Foresite Capital

Foresite Capital is a multi-stage healthcare and life sciences investment firm with ~$4 billion under management. The firm aims to address areas of great unmet need by funding promising healthcare and life sciences businesses at all stages of their life cycles. Foresite Capital uses a data science-driven approach to invest in companies that leverage biology and big data to transform healthcare, including 10x Genomics, Relay Therapeutics, Element Biosciences, Inscripta, as well as companies developing next generation therapeutics. Founded in 2011, Foresite Capital is based in San Francisco.