The European venture capital firm aims to raise a total €250m for its fourth fund by next year.
French venture capital firm Kurma Partners, which co-creates and invests in health and biotech spinouts based on European academic research, has raised €140m ($154m) for a new investment fund.
The fundraising marks the first close of Biofund IV. Kurma aims to raise a total €250m for the fund by the final closing in 2025. Kurma has seven existing funds focused on healthcare but this will be its largest.
Academic and government labs Kurma works with include the Pasteur Institute, a French nonprofit foundation focused on the study of diseases and vaccines; SATT Paris-Saclay, a joint tech transfer office of Université Paris-Saclay and Institut Polytechnique de Paris; and IRB Barcelona, a Spanish biomedical research centre.
The new fund will invest in up to 20 biotech and healthcare companies. It already has made three investments from the fund: SciRhom, a developer of biopharmaceuticals for the treatment of autoimmune diseases, which was spun out of German government research centre IZB; Memo Therapeutics, an ETH Zurich late-stage biotech spinout; and Avidicure, a Dutch cancer immunotherapeutics company.
Australian biotech company CSL is a corporate limited partner in the fund. Other investors include European investment group Eurazeo, which owns Kurma Partners, and French public sector investment bank Bpifrance.
Kurma Partners was an investor in Amolyt Pharma, a company developing treatments for rare endocrine diseases, which biopharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca bought for $1.05bn in July 2024.
