New investors push corporate-backed venture funds down the rankings

Two big beasts of the biotech venture world – Orbimed and NEA – have long dominated the private financing space, a look back over 10 years of investor activity finds. A comparison of the first and second halves of the decade also shows how a couple of the big corporate venture funds have slipped down the rankings, though in Novartis’s case this was largely caused by an explosion of activity from new, cash-rich private funds. The Swiss pharma’s venture arm was involved in roughly the same proportion of rounds in the two five-year periods analysed, yet fell several places. Glaxo’s retreat – its venture arm, SR One, sits at 47th place in the later five-year period – culminated in a spin-off last year. Notable arrivals in the top 10 more recently include Cormorant, which largely backs large, pre-flotation crossover rounds, financings that have become common with IPO window wide open. GV is Google’s venture arm, a new cash-rich investor that backed broadly across the life science space, funding developers of therapeutics and diagnostics alike.

Additional analyses of corporate venture can be found here: The retreat of corporate venture funding?