Vivo Capital, the healthcare-focused investment firm, recently raised more than $1.3 billion for its new fund dubbed Vivo Capital Fund IX.
It’s the ninth fund for the Palo Alto, California-based investment company that came online in 1996. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Vivo Capital didn’t disclose how much it was looking to raise for its latest fund.
Last September it closed the Vivo Opportunity Fund at an oversubscribed $635 million. When it closed that fund it had $2.2 billion under management as a result. That fund was created to invest in small to mid-cap public life sciences companies.
Vivo Capital is a veteran when it comes to investing in healthcare focused companies. It’s an investor in a slew of U.S. based companies including Aclaris Therapeutics, Harmony Biosciences, and SentreHEART to name a few. It has long directed its investments at creating high-quality healthcare and life science companies. The firm has more than $3 billion in capital under management and focuses its investments in the U.S. and Greater China. To meet that end it has offices in Palo Alto, California, Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei, and Hong Kong.
Having offices across the globe is an important piece of the Vivo Capital strategy. Because it invests in both U.S. and Chinese companies it can help them forge cross-border partnerships that enable them to acquire new products and expand the market for their existing ones. Vivo also builds companies from the ground up, relying on its expertise in evaluating data to generate returns for its investors.
When it comes to the size of the companies Vivo invests in the firm doesn’t discriminate. At a time when a lot of the venture funding is going toward late-stage startups, Vivo is active at all levels. When deciding if it will invest in a company, it looks at its underlying technology, whether or not it supports preclinical and clinical data, the market potential for its products and the strength of its intellectual property and management team.
