Flagship Pioneering, a Cambridge, MA-based life sciences innovation enterprise, secured $824m in a new capital pool.
Special Opportunities Fund II will support the growth of human health and sustainability companies originated by its Flagship Labs unit. The new capital pool will operate alongside more than $700m in capital raised in late 2017 and 2018 that currently finances Flagship’s in-house innovation and company origination activities. It will enable Flagship to further accelerate the growth of companies originated in its institutional innovation foundry, Flagship Labs. Investors include long-time limited partners as well as new institutional investors and family offices.
The Special Opportunities Fund II follows a $285m Special Opportunities Fund I, closed in 2016.
Led by Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D., Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Flagship Pioneering conceives, creates, resources, and develops first-in-category life sciences companies to transform human health and sustainability.
The firm’s process has four distinct stages of company evolution:
1) imagining future value through hypothetical innovations (Exploration);
2) prototyping some of them (ProtoCo);
3) transforming successful ones into new companies (NewCo);
4) spinning them out of Flagship Labs into ecosystem growth companies (GrowthCo).
The current Flagship ecosystem includes Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI), Evelo Biosciences (NASDAQ: EVLO), Indigo Agriculture, Kaleido Biosciences (NASDAQ: KLDO), Moderna Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MRNA), Quanterix Corporation (NASDAQ: QTRX), Rubius Therapeutics (NASDAQ: RUBY), Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB), and Syros Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SYRS).
FinSMEs
20/03/2019