Asabys Partners said Thursday it closed its second health innovation fund at €180 million, or about $200 million.
The Barcelona-based VC firm’s raise expands the money available to biotech and health tech startups in Spain and elsewhere in Europe.
Several other firms in Europe have disclosed funding hauls this year, including Spanish group Invivo, Milan-based XGEN Venture, Earlybird Health in Germany, Dublin-headquartered Seroba and Venga Ventures in Austria.
In a sign of growing interest in European startups, co-founder and managing partner Clara Campàs said Asabys was able to attract US-based limited partners for the second fund. It hadn’t done so for the first fund.
“The European ecosystem is still not on the same level as the US with regards to investment in healthcare, but we’re getting there,” said Maite Malet, who works on investment and corporate development at Asabys.
Asabys initially targeted about €150 million for its second fund and had set a hard cap at €200 million. The firm’s first fund raised €117 million. Since its founding in 2018, it’s had three exits, including Agomab’s acquisition of Origo Biopharma in 2021.
“We are above our target size, which is something to celebrate for us, but we love hard caps,” Campàs told Endpoints News. “We would love to have reached the hard cap, but that was not possible at this time, because 2023 was a very slow path in fundraising and everybody was paralyzed in this regard.”
The firm plans to invest the new money in up to 15 startups across biopharma, medical devices and health technologies, Campàs said. Asabys focuses on Series A rounds for biotechs that are about two or so years old, she said.
It’s interested in therapeutic areas like oncology and neuroscience and a range of modalities, though the fund has yet to back a cell therapy company, the managing partner said.
Oncology is falling out of favor for some VCs, but the European Society for Medical Oncology’s annual confab, held earlier this month in Asabys’ backyard in Barcelona, highlighted that “there’s a huge need still,” Campàs said.
Asabys has already backed five startups with the second fund since last year. Those companies include deepull, Orikine Bio, Gradient Denervation Technologies, ALLOX and Augustine Therapeutics.