- RA Capital Management has closed its first and inaugural venture fund called RA Capital Nexus Fund, L.P. (“Nexus”) at just over $300 million
RA Capital Management has officially closed its first and inaugural venture fund called RA Capital Nexus Fund, L.P. (“Nexus”) at just over $300 million. This boosts RA Capital’s private deal capacity to nearly $1 billion and total assets under management to approximately $2.5 billion. Nexus is expected to participate in substantially all investments in private companies made by RA Capital alongside its main longstanding fund called RA Capital Healthcare Fund L.P.
“We are grateful for the continued support of our existing limited partners and welcome new LPs who share our optimism that there is so much more good that biotechnology can do for humanity,” said RA Capital co-founder and Portfolio Manager Peter Kolchinsky in a statement.
RA has made over 100 private company investments since 2012 and already started building companies from scratch in recent years. And RA Capital pursues a multi-stage approach which spans new company formation, venture financing, and public investing.
“This is a unique time and place in biotech history. As an industry, our ability to turn breakthrough science into transformative improvements in human health is unprecedented. Our team is honored to play an ongoing role in this ecosystem,” added Managing Director Joshua Resnick.
The investment process is led by RA Capital’s Managing Director group, including Portfolio Managers Peter Kolchinsky and Rajeev Shah, Co-Heads of Venture Josh Resnick and Andrew Levin, and nine other professionals.
“The companies RA Capital expects to build will range from single-assets to broad platforms, spanning early discovery through late clinical-stage, across all therapeutic areas, such as neurology, rare disorders, oncology, and cardiovascular disease,” explained Levin.
Nexus is considered a natural extension of RA Capital’s investment strategy, expanding the private capital pool to enable RA Capital to take larger positions in high-conviction investments and opening the RA Capital platform to limited partners who prefer investing in a closed-end venture fund.
“The real stars of this industry are the scientists and entrepreneurs who figure out new ways to tackle unsolved problems. We at RA Capital endeavor to assemble the people, tools, and capital to work closely with these leaders and help them to build biotech companies that have the potential to turn their scientific insights into a medicine or other products,” commented Portfolio Manager Raj Shah. “We focus on offering scientific, strategic, and operational support with the goal of enabling company building through our TechAtlas group, the venture partner and executive in residence programs, and the incubator. All of this is centered on the goal of helping scientists, clinicians, and entrepreneurs to bring valuable medical advances to patients for the long-term benefit of society.”
RA Capital’s internal incubator and a venture partner/executive-in-residence program are designed for supporting company creation efforts. And the incubator currently has 19 programs in discovery and early development and works to advance them through a “go/no go” decision, in a time- and cost-efficient manner.
To date, two companies have been launched with drug candidates based on molecules initially discovered and developed in the incubator. And the venture partner and executive-in-residence programs bring in seasoned executives and entrepreneurs who help to build and lead new companies.
