Biopharma and venture capital: a deep dive

Find out where the venture money has been flowing in our new report on biopharma investment trends, free to download now.

Deep pools of private capital have become available to young drug developers in the past few years. The pandemic triggered a new flood of cash, but the inflows of money had already picked up some time before, with Covid-19 merely reinforcing a new appreciation of the sector’s attributes.

But how permanent will these new fund flows prove? And where exactly is this new money coming to rest? Our new report, free to download here, seeks to answer these and other questions, via interviews with leading venture investors and data from Evaluate Pharma.

The report reveals some of the investment trends that have developed over the past five years. One of the clear findings is how round sizes have ballooned, as venture funds have focused ever larger amounts of money on fewer companies.

“Covid has focused minds. Chief investment officers everywhere are being encouraged to invest in healthcare and biotech,” says Antoine Papiernik, managing partner of Sofinnova, a European venture fund. 

“Science for the most part is getting funded, but through a much more judicious deployment of capital than historically,” says Tim Haines, managing partner of the UK venture firm Abingworth.

Evaluate Vantage Venture Report 2021.

As well as the topline data above, the report includes analyses of mean and median round sizes by stage of investment and certain therapy areas. Pretty much any way the data are cut, the trends are all going in the same direction.

The report also lays out how oncology research has captured an ever growing share of the venture cash. In 2016 companies working in cancer counted for 27% of the investment rounds and amassed 30% of the venture cash in this analysis. By 2020 those figures had ballooned to 30% and 46% respectively.

Concern about over-investment is one of the biggest worries harboured by investors and executives right now. If this has occurred, cancer is where it has happened. For much more in-depth discussion and data on all of these themes and more, download our free report now.

Evaluate Vantage Venture Report 2021.

Evaluate Vantage has also recently published the following articles on separate venture financing themes:

A look at the corporate funds, backed by big drug developers, in The retreat of corporate venture funding? 

An analysis of regional investment trends, in Europe’s venture boom trails the US.

The latest quarterly data can be found here: Biotech venture financing starts the year with a bang.

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