Bold Capital Partners, a life sciences and deep tech investor, is raising a new fund to support biotechs and diagnostics makers focused on “healthy human life extension.”
The so-called BOLD Longevity Growth Fund is targeting $200 million, according to a recent SEC filing from the Boston area firm. So far, it’s invested in AI drug discovery company Verge Genomics, according to Bold’s website. More are “coming soon,” according to the site.
Bold couldn’t immediately be reached by Endpoints News.
Leading the fund is an experienced group of longevity investors who have co-founded more than 50 biotech and longevity companies, according to Bold’s website. Its co-founders include Sergey Young, Teymour Boutros-Ghali and Peter Diamandis, executive chair of the XPRIZE Foundation, a nonprofit that hosts public competitions for technological innovation.
In early 2019, Young unveiled the $100 million Longevity Vision Fund, with support from Diamandis. That fund has backed AI biotechs like Flagship-founded Valo Health and Alex Zhavoronkov’s Insilico Medicine, as well as cancer detection startup Freenome, gene therapy maker 4D Molecular Therapeutics, gene writer Tessera Therapeutics and age-related diseases company Cambrian Bio, among about a dozen others.
“I’ve never looked like my age … and with my name, I think it was predetermined that I was going to work in the space” of aging, Young told Endpoints at the time.
In the past few years, multiple investment firms and incubators have launched to support a growing number of anti-aging biotechs, “healthy lifespan” startups and companies advancing R&D efforts to delay death. Companies like Cambrian and Juvenescence are building pipelines. But well-established biotech VCs have yet to fully embrace longevity. Perhaps in a sign of the gap left by specialist funds, well-known entrepreneurs like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have reportedly personally invested in longevity biotechs, including Altos Labs and Retro Biosciences, respectively.
Bold said its Longevity Growth Fund will invest in platform technologies that make “5-10x improvements in efficiency and safety, reshaping medical practice and making those technologies more affordable and accessible.” It seeks out growth-stage companies and will co-invest with the “largest biotech VC funds and big pharma,” according to its website.
The broader biotech capital pool has recently been propped up by additional funds from Foresite, JP Morgan, Amplitude Ventures, ORI Capital and others.