Canaan recently announced $850 million in new capital to continue its history of building and supporting transformational companies in the technology and healthcare sectors. Canaan XIII is set up as an oversubscribed $650 million fund intended to support entrepreneurs seeking seed and Series A funding with reserves to support companies through exits like merger and acquisition (M&A activity and initial public offerings (IPOs). And an additional $200 million of commitments is available to accelerate the growth of existing portfolio companies across all of Canaan’s active funds. These new funds bring Canaan’s total assets under management to $6.8 billion.
Canaan has been building deep relationships with the brightest scientific and entrepreneurial minds in academia and industry in their earliest days of company building. And with investments spanning technology and life sciences from Canaan’s early days, the firm’s approach has led to a long track record of enduring companies and deep partnerships with entrepreneurs, engineers, and scientists. Canaan’s approach has also led to many notable exits with important new technologies distributed throughout the world, including Dexcom, Instacart, and Match, along with 14 FDA-approved drugs successfully hitting the market, including 10 in the last 8 years.
In just the past 5 years, Canaan has seen 10 IPOs, 4 public listings, and 8 M&A exits within its portfolio and generated nearly $1.7 billion of realizations. And they include IPOs for Day One Biopharmaceuticals in May 2021, TheRealReal in June 2019, and Arvinas in September 2018, as well as public listings for Aeva and Berkshire Grey, both in 2021. And they also include acquisitions for Kustomer (acquired by Meta for $1 billion in February 2022), Unchained Labs (acquired by the Carlyle Group for $435 million in April 2021), Ambra Health (acquired by Intelerad Medical Systems in October 2021), ShopKeep (acquired by Lightspeed for $440 million in November 2020), and Axis Security (acquired by Hewlett Packard Enterprise in March 2023).
Canaan XIII is going to invest in seed and early-stage technology companies spanning enterprise, consumer, frontier tech, and fintech. The healthcare effort for Canaan XIII is going to be dedicated to company creation and early investments in areas that Canaan believes represent highest unmet clinical and medical needs and in which new medicines enhance patient care and outcomes. This includes oncology, immunology, and neurology, and larger therapeutic indications like cardiology and respiratory, where promising clinical-stage assets are often overlooked or neglected within the industry.
With Canaan XIII, the team will specifically seek to prioritize new modalities like the latest genetically defined precision approaches that it believes are capable of producing impactful new medicines that drive meaningful clinical outcomes. And the healthcare team’s latest company creation and investment highlights include Vivace Therapeutics, Synthekine, RADD Pharmaceuticals, and the recently unveiled Halda Therapeutics, among others.
KEY QUOTES:
“We are grateful for the support of our limited partners, many of whom have invested with Canaan over many years in numerous funds. Their belief in the firm and our consistent approach to venture allowed for a fast and efficient fundraising process despite market conditions. Whereas others are navigating their portfolios through a difficult market for the first time, Canaan has amassed decades of operational expertise that has put us in a unique position to help our portfolio company leadership teams guide their businesses through the current environment. We believe Canaan XIII reflects the high caliber of our team, the trust we’ve built with our limited partners, and the successful track record we’ve established through multiple up and down market cycles over our more than 35-year history in venture.”
— John J. Pacifico, General Partner, COO & CFO of Canaan
“Canaan has always aimed to be the very first to partner with the best entrepreneurs and companies because we have a shared long-term view to build a company together, in the right way and for the long haul. This consistent approach is intrinsic to who we are and how we work. It’s also invaluable to aspiring entrepreneurs during times of uncertainty. We pride ourselves on being our founders’ first phone call and being able to offer the deep institutional knowledge only 35 years in this industry can provide.”
— Maha Ibrahim, General Partner at Canaan
“While financial markets regularly modulate up and down, the trajectory of scientific knowledge is always moving up and toward the right. We know more today about the fundamental drivers of health and disease than ever before, and the science being deployed to pursue new therapeutic approaches is staggering. It is a great time to be at the forefront of creating and investing in life science companies that will transform how patients are treated and dramatically improve the outcomes they experience. We see this every day across our current portfolio and look forward to leveraging Canaan XIII to continue this mission.”
— Tim Shannon, M.D., General Partner at Canaan
