Despite having 47 IPOs, 28 M&As and 58 FDA-approved drugs under its belt, the 13-year-old multi-stage healthcare and life sciences firm took two years to raise its sixth fund.
On Wednesday, Foresite announced that it closed its sixth fund with $900 million.
Last summer, Foresite co-led a $115 million Series F into CG Oncology, a drug discovery company that had a successful IPO listing in January.
Foresite intends to back about 20 companies from its sixth fund, writing checks from a couple of million up to $75 million.
“Over a decade ago, we named the firm Foresite because we thought we had an idea of where healthcare was headed,” Tananbaum said.
When they first met in 2007, the now brothers-in-law bonded over their passion for venture capital, eventually leading them to invest together from their personal capital.
By 2020, Anderson and Fogelsong decided to take their investing relationship to the next level by launching their first fund with external capital.
That fund, which the firm considers its second vehicle, closed at $91.5 million, well above its initial target of $60 million.
So,they named their firm “Friends & Family Capital” to capture that spirit, their own family connection, and Fogelsong’s roots in a prominent Silicon Valley VC family.
Like its previous fund, Friends & Family’s third fund will be used to invest in “classic B2B enterprise software” companies and hardware businesses with recurring revenue components.
The early-stage venture capital firm took a unique take on the industry by spearheading public relations for its portfolio companies.
Through Fund I ($20 million) and Fund II ($50 million), the Silicon Valley firm’s portfolio has had 22 exits, including an IPO with Terran Orbital.
It also has backed eight unicorns, including Superhuman, Remote, Worldcoin, Truebill (which exited to Rocket Companies in 2021) and DuckDuckGo.
“When we connected, he was already the founder of three unicorns, which was quite surprising,” Bucher told TechCrunch.
A year later, Bucher exited M&A PR Studio and started Day One Ventures.
Notable Capital’s Hans Tung on the state of VC and the upside to down roundsTo some investors, “down round” is a dirty phrase, but not to Notable Capital’s Hans Tung.
Hans is a managing partner at Notable Capital, formerly GGV Capital, a venture firm focusing on investments in the U.S., Latin America, Israel, and Europe.
Hans, whose portfolio includes the likes of Airbnb, StockX and Slack, sat down with TechCrunch’s Equity podcast to discuss the overall state of venture and why he still believes down rounds can make a lot of sense.
Of course, we dug into recent changes at his own firm, which evolved from 24-year-old cross-border firm GGV Capital and rebranded its U.S. and Asia operations to Notable Capital and Granite Asia, respectively.
GGV’s transformation is the latest in a string of changes we’ve seen in the world of venture capital, including personnel changes at Founders Fund, Benchmark and Thrive Capital.
Powerhouse venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is promoting Jennifer Li to general partner after six years at the firm.
She’s being tapped to help invest the new $1.25 billion Infrastructure fund managed by longtime a16z general partner Martin Casado.
The Infrastructure fund is part of the fresh $7.2 billion that the Silicon Valley VC giant just raised.
Li has been an investing partner on the Infrastructure team for a while, which means she was already writing checks and taking board seats.
Plus she’s one of only four GPs on the Infrastructure team.
Sources tell us that Lacework — a cloud security startup that was valued at $8.3 billion post-money in its last funding round — is in talks to be acquired by another security player, Wiz, for a price of just $150–$200 million.
Wiz — valued at around $10 billion — is one of them.
The company is positioning itself as a one-stop-shop for all things cloud security en route to its IPO.
Earlier this month Wiz acquired Gem Security for $350 million, and it sounds like the M&A will not end with Laceworks.
We are always exploring compelling M&A opportunities that will enhance both our technological capabilities and business expansion, as we strive to build the world’s leading cloud security platform.”
VerSe Innovation, the parent firm of Indian news aggregator app Dailyhunt, has acquired the popular digital newsstand firm Magzter, the two said Thursday.
The Bengaluru-headquartered startup has fully acquired Magzter, a New York-headquartered firm that counted Singapore Press Holdings among its backers.
Magzter has amassed over 1 million paying subscribers in India and boasts a global active user base of 87 million, Bedi said.
The firm, which offers an all-you-can-consume model with annual subscription fees ranging from $20 to $30, will find a distribution and technology partner in VerSe Innovation, he added.
The Indian firm plans to launch Dailyhunt Premium this year that will include an ad-free experience as well as Magzter’s catalog.
Mentee Robotics hasn’t been in stealth, exactly.
The Israeli firm caught a small wave of press at the tail end of 2022, following Tesla’s initial humanoid robotics announcement.
Even so, the firm caught some headlines because its co-founder and chair, Amnon Shashua, founded Mobileye and the well-funded AI firm, AI21 Labs.
On Wednesday, however, the company offered up a glimpse of Menteebot, its own stab at the rapidly growing humanoid category.
In fact, this is one of those spots where the precise definition of what constitutes a humanoid system gets blurred.
Former senior SpaceX executive Tom Ochinero is teaming up with SpaceX alum-turned-VC, Achal Upadhyaya, and one of Sequoia’s top finance leaders, Spencer Hemphill, on a new venture called Interlagos Capital, TechCrunch has learned.
There is little public information available about Interlagos, and the trio did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
Ochinero, Upadhyaya and Hemphill are all listed on the documents.
Ochinero is just the latest SpaceX executive to move from the behemoth space company into venture investing.
Other notable investors in the SpaceX-to-VC pipeline include Founders Fund’s Scott Nolan, who was a very early SpaceX employee, and Alpine Space Ventures’ Bulent Alton.
Climate investor Bay Bridge Ventures is raising a new $200 million fund, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
Bay Bridge filed paperwork Monday for the new climate fund with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
And Congruent Ventures raised a $275 million fund in 2023, turning down $325 million in additional LP interest.
Bay Bridge Ventures is new, having been founded in 2022 with a focus on ESG more broadly and sustainability in particular.
Still, that doesn’t mean Bay Bridge lacks experience.
