RA Capital Management (RA Capital) has held the first and final closing of its inaugural venture fund, RA Capital Nexus Fund (Nexus), at just over USD300 million, boosting RA Capital’s private deal capacity to nearly USD1 billion and total assets under management to approximately USD2.5 billion.
Nexus is expected to participate in substantially all investments in private companies made by RA Capital alongside its main, longstanding fund, RA Capital Healthcare Fund.
“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,” says RA Capital co-founder and Portfolio Manager Peter Kolchinsky.
“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 honoured to play an ongoing role in this ecosystem,” says Managing Director Josh Resnick.
Venture investing is an important part of RA Capital’s strategy. RA Capital has made over 100 private company investments since 2012, and has, in recent years, begun building companies from scratch. RA Capital pursues a multi-stage approach, which spans new company formation, venture financing, and public investing. The investment process is led by RA Capital’s Managing Director group, which includes Portfolio Managers Peter Kolchinsky and Raj Shah, Co-Heads of Venture Josh Resnick and Andrew Levin, and nine other professionals.
Nexus is 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 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,” says Managing Director Andrew Levin.
RA Capital’s internal incubator and a venture partner/executive-in-residence program are designed to support company creation efforts. 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. The venture partner and executive-in-residence programs bring in experienced executives and entrepreneurs who help to build and lead new companies.
“The real stars of this industry are the scientists and entrepreneurs who figure out new ways to tackle unsolved problems. We at RA Capital endeavour 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,” says 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 centred on the goal of helping scientists, clinicians, and entrepreneurs to bring valuable medical advances to patients for the long-term benefit of society.”
