Anja König, global head of Novartis Venture Fund, is one of the 100 leading corporate venturing professionals in our 2025 Powerlist.

Anja König is a veteran of corporate venturing, having led the investment unit of Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis for the past eight years. She was managing director of the $750m fund for 10 years before she became head in 2017.
She is leading the unit, which was founded in 1996, through the current turbulent times in the biotech market.
“The biotech sector is now in bear territory,” says König, “and this offers opportunities for corporate venture funds, alongside the challenges for all early-stage investors.”
She is getting through the market tumult by fostering a collaborative culture for her team of 11. “It helps us retain the team and keep motivated. We have each other’s backs,” says König.
“The biotech sector is now in bear territory, and this offers opportunities for corporate venture funds, alongside the challenges for all early-stage investors.”
The corporate venturing unit invests in life sciences companies and teams developing novel therapeutics in the biotechnology and biopharma sectors. It takes an active role in portfolio management.
It has 40 life sciences companies in its portfolio based in North America and Europe, which it manages from its offices in Basel, Switzerland and Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.

A recent new investment is RhyGaze in Basel, a maker of gene therapy for diseases causing blindness, which raised $86m in a series A round in January this year. Another is Granite Bio, also in Basel, which just came out of stealth, with financings adding up to $100m.
Since its founding, Novartis Venture Fund has had 30 exits through mergers and acquisitions and 40 initial public offerings.
König was an associate partner at McKinsey & Company before joining Novartis. She serves on the board of Sensirion, a publicly listed Swiss engineering company. She previously served on the Foundation Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation, as well as many biotech companies, including Bicycle Therapeutics, Heptares, Covagen and Forendo.
She is a member of the Swiss Venture Competition Jury, which evaluates startup companies across industries in Switzerland. She holds a PhD in theoretical physics from Cornell University in the US and a master’s degree in physics from Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, Germany.

The Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist represents the 100 individuals spearheading the future of the corporate venturing industry.
These individuals excel in terms of their venturing approach and structure, number and quality of portfolio companies and in their contributions to the corporate venturing profession.