Massachusetts Institute of Technology launches a $5bn fundraising effort to accelerate long-term research and attract more VCs to its spinouts.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is raising a $5bn fund to boost the pace of its long-term research, university president L Rafael Reif has told the Boston Globe.
Dubbed MIT Campaign for a Better World, the fundraising effort was made public only last Friday but the institute had already secured $2.6bn at that point. MIT has not announced a timeline for the fundraising, though its previous efforts took from 1997 to 2004.
The campaign aims to support the commercialisation of large-scale research that tackles problems such as climate change and access to clean water, or HIV and Alzheimer’s disease.
Getting the research off the ground with internal funding is critical, as venture capitalists have focused their interest on spinouts with a more short-term return, such as software developers. The campaign would give researchers the opportunity to develop their innovations to a point where they are more attractive propositions to a VC investor.
Currently, $119m of all research money at the institute is supplied by corporations, equalling 17% of total research expenditures at MIT. The majority of remaining capital is provided by the US federal government, but the government’s have been declining for a few years across the country.
MIT’s tech transfer office Technology Licensing Office set up 28 spinouts, granted 91 licenses and had 314 patents issued last year.
Reif said: “Society is missing on innovation that is happening here on many campuses because it gets stuck here, it gets bottle-necked.”
