Gilde’s new investment fund reaches €740m at close

Netherlands-based investment group Gilde Healthcare has finally closed its new Venture & Growth VI fund with committed funding of €740 million, well ahead of its original target of €600 million.

The fund – backed by a broad range of international investors – was set up to support innovative European and North American companies operating in the digital healthcare, medtech, and therapeutics areas, with an emphasis on ventures that “enable better care at lower cost.”

Pieter van der Meer (pictured above), managing partner at Gilde Healthcare, said: “The strong interest from institutional investors driven to make a substantial impact, is a clear endorsement of our mission: investing in solutions to improve the quality of patient care while keeping it affordable.”

The new fund now plans to invest €10 million to 70 million per new portfolio company, an increase at the top end on its earlier €10 million to €60 million range.

Selection of candidates will be carried out with a recently formed Impact Council – chaired by former EMA executive director, Guido Rasi – which includes representatives from patients, healthcare professionals, regulatory bodies, industry, health technology assessment bodies, and the payer community.

Together with the previous Venture & Growth fund that closed in 2020 and Gilde’s Private Equity IV fund, which closed last year, takes the total capital raised by Gilde in the last three years to €1.7 billion.

“Our broad strategy, covering digital health, medtech and therapeutics, results in a holistic approach, allowing us to select the most optimal and cost-effective solution for the individual patient,” said van der Meer.

“With a team of sector experts, we help companies to further scale medical innovations and to make them accessible globally.”

Among its previous investments are French healthtech company Withings, which develops wearable devices for patient data collection, as well as Dutch cancer medicines developer Lava Therapeutics, Belgian antibody specialist Ablynx and GT Medical Technologies, a US medical device company dedicated to improving the lives of patients with brain tumours.

The increased size of the fund will be a morale boost for the biotech sector, which is currently in the middle of a rough patch for financing with venture capital investment, debt financing, initial public offerings, and follow-on raises all down from levels seen during the pandemic.

Other recent raises for life sciences investors include a whopping $4.3 billion raise for Orbimed, $500 million across two funds run by US venture capital group 1315 Capital, and new funds at Anglo-Swiss outfit Medicxi ($400 million) and US funds Cure Ventures ($350 million) and Curie.bio ($500 million) earlier this year.