Venture capital giant Flagship Pioneering plans to support the creation and development of about 25 new startups in life sciences or “human health,” sustainability, and artificial intelligence over the next three to five years with a combined $3.6 billion in new capital.
The new effort will maintain Flagship’s primary portfolio focuses on human health and sustainability, while adding to an AI portfolio that has grown over the past six years since it entered the segment by founding Generate:Biomedicines, a developer of therapeutics based on de novo protein generation. Flagship joined numerous other investors in Generate:Biomedicines’ $273 million Series C financing completed last year, bringing its total equity financing since 2020 to nearly $700 million.
“From there, we’ve also expanded to AI for cell-based drug discovery more broadly, drug development using AI, DNA-based use of AI in order to design new DNA and new lipid nanoparticles,” a Flagship spokesperson told GEN. “Through our companies and our internal teams, Flagship aims to lead the AI revolution in drug discovery and development—one that goes from artisanal and probabilistic to engineerable and programmable.”
Flagship added that the new human health-focused platform companies it plans to create “will include drug discovery and development, diagnostics and computational tools, and beyond.”
Flagship has raised $2.6 billion into its eighth fund, Fund VIII, as well as side funds totaling $1 billion that include sector-specific strategic partnerships. The $3.6 billion brings the total capital raised by Flagship into its funds since 2021 to $6.4 billion.
Flagship cautioned that not all of the $1B or side funds are sector-specific strategic partnerships, and even new such partnerships may look different than those already announced.
One example of a sector-specific strategic partnership maintained by Flagship in recent years is one that has been co-launched with diabetes/obesity drug giant Novo Nordisk. Under that partnership, launched in 2022, Novo Nordisk provides funding for initiated research programs and has an exclusive option to license each program.
Novo Nordisk and Flagship have fulfilled their initial goal of launching three to five research programs within the first three years of their collaboration. Novo Nordisk has ongoing collaborations with three Flagship Pioneering companies.
Two were launched in January, with the AI-based drug developer Cellarity and Omega Therapeutics, a developer of programmable epigenomic messenger RNA (mRNA) therapies. A third collaboration was launched in May by Novo Nordisk and Flagship-launched Metaphore Biotechnologies to develop up to two advanced obesity management treatments.
Novo Nordisk is one of three partners with which Flagship Pioneering’s in-house drug development unit Pioneering Medicines develops therapeutics; the other two are Pfizer and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Pioneering Medicines has grown to more than 100 people, with a pipeline of ten therapeutics under development and plans to expand with additional partnerships, Flagship said.
As a result of its latest raise, Flagship has grown its aggregate capital pool to $10.9 billion, with $14 billion of assets under management.
Flagship said it and its co-investors have invested an aggregate $5.8 billion of equity capital into its current ecosystem of companies since the close of Flagship’s last fund in 2021.
“Our unique approach to making breakthrough scientific discoveries, combined with our track record of founding, building, and scaling companies, has led to the creation and growth of more than 100 biotechnology companies in just over two decades,” Flagship Pioneering founder and CEO Noubar Afeyan, PhD, said in a statement. “And I believe Flagship’s most generative, impactful days lie ahead of us.”