GUV's Thierry Heles looks at Osage's second fund.
Osage University Partners, a venture capital fund specialising in university spin-outs, is raising $200m for its Osage University Partners II fund. No official statement has yet been issued by the firm, but according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the new fund has attracted the support of 145 investors to date, committing a total of $151m.
Osage has established partnerships with 65 universities, national laboratories and research institutions, such as Duke University, Princeton University, seven University of California campuses and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It supports spin-outs exclusively from these partners.
Osage is currently investing from its first fund, a $100m investment pool closed in 2011. It invests in all sectors from energy to life sciences to IT, and across all stages from seed to growth equity. Individual companies can receive between $5m to $7m in total investment over several rounds.
The new fund will continue that strategy and make investments between $5m and $6m into spin-outs. It will have a particular focus on cleantech, IT, health care IT, biopharma, energy, medical devices and diagnostics, and tech-enabled services. It will also, as it currently does, seek co-investments from other firms.
Osage’s portfolio has grown to include 32 spin-outs, and the fund has seen relatively big successes with several of its investments. Some have celebrated an exit via acquisition, such as University City Science Centre spin-out Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, which was acquired by Eli Lilly in December 2010 for $800m.
Another spin-out that recently saw a significant exit is University of California, San Diego spin-out Otonomy, which floated on Nasdaq in August 2014 for $100m. Ahead of its initial public offering, it had raised a total of $143.4m throughout four investment rounds.
Osage itself is currently looking to expand, and is hiring for a fund controller, a life science associate and a tech associate.
A timeline on when Osage expects to close its new fund or when it will begin investments from the new pool is not yet known.
