Signal: Dutch health investor Gilde raises $804m for health startup fund

Gilde Healthcare, a Dutch health investor, has closed its new Venture&Growth (V&G) VI fund after reaching its hard cap of €740m ($804m). Gilde’s V&G funds focus on “lower mid-market healthcare companies”, according to its website, and it has been an early investor in companies such as device developer Inari Medical, which achieved a $5bn valuation when it went public in 2020.

Gilde manages over €2.6bn across its V&G and Private Equity funds and has raised over €1.7bn over the past three years for separate funds. Fund VI – as the name suggests, its sixth – initially closed at €600m in April. At a time when funding has been drying up, particularly for medtech startups, the ease with which Gilde has raised capital should reassure both investors and founders in the field.

Speaking to Pharmaceutical Technology, managing partner Pieter van der Meer explained how Gilde achieves its impressive fundraising.

“We keep our focus wide, investing in digital healthcare, medical technology and therapeutics,” he said. “Biopharma is not so good at the moment, but I’ve been through several cycles myself; you never know which theme will be more popular than the other.

We do tend to focus on proven business models and technologies that have established reimbursement. We are in an exciting time at the moment as we see new enabling technologies dealing with indications we’ve had for a long time. We see tangible benefits of artificial intelligence, for instance, in drug development and therapeutics.”

Gilde is also looking at CRISPR and other gene therapy solutions. When asked how this fits into Gilde’s focus on lower cost and more proven technologies, van der Meer explained: “The way we see CRISPR gene therapy, looking at reimbursement, we expect that [CRISPR providers] will only be reimbursed if [their treatments] work – but if they do, reimbursement will be turned upside down. You can no longer just provide everyone with pills and see what happens.

“We will see a personalised treatment paradigm. There is no one golden bullet anymore. But first, you have to prove a patient is being treated by the technology.”

Van der Meer confirmed that Gilde’s funds have shown impressive returns previously, though no numbers were given on the record.

Gilde often invests in companies during Series A funding, allowing it to become a major stakeholder in companies without needing to invest comparatively huge amounts. For instance, it led the initial funding round of €16m into cancer treatment biopharma Lava Therapeutics in 2018 and remains the largest shareholder in the company.

Though Lava’s share price has collapsed since its IPO in 2021, GlobalData research shows that the company’s trends are positive. Its monoclonal antibody LAVA-1207, currently in Phase II trials for resistant prostate cancers, is expected to reach an annual revenue of $17m by 2039. As with most biopharma startups, it is currently posting losses, but they are shrinking year on year. The company is also in collaboration with pharma giant Johnson & Johnson to discover new treatments for cancer.

Subsequent to announcing the closure of Fund VI, Gilde announced that biotech firm Genmab has joined the fund as an investor.

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