There’s life yet in the venture capital business.
RA Capital Management is raising money for a new VC fund.
The health care and life sciences investment firm is seeking capital for RA Capital Planetary Health International Fund and an offshore equivalent, according to regulatory filings.
The initiative is another sign that interest in investing in private companies is perking up.
This is RA Capital’s fourth VC fund.
The manager, headed by founder Peter Kolchinsky and managing partner Rajeev Shah, previously launched three VC funds under the name of Nexus. RA Capital also is involved in new company creation, including building ventures from scratch within its incubator, according to the firm’s website.
RA Capital is best known for its hedge fund, which is up 4.5 percent for the year through August, according to an investor. Last year the hedge fund was down 1.9 percent, beating most of its peers. But several of the peer funds posted double-digit losses.
Little is known about the new VC fund, including how much capital the firm is seeking to raise.
However, on its website RA Capital highlights its planetary health strategy, explaining it focuses on creating and funding companies that develop and commercialize cost-effective solutions to reduce emissions, increase resource availability, and restore environmental quality. “We define ourselves by our ability to offer companies considerable value beyond capital,” it adds.
RA Capital further states that its planetary health strategy is based on the principles of “one-team, one knowledge core.” It explains the firm works together “to develop a unified vision of markets and technologies so we can collaboratively build a portfolio of companies that we believe will reveal large market opportunities.”
It goes on to explain that the firm is a visual team, and its “growing and constantly evolving maps allow us to contextualize competition and value chain dependency among commercial and development-stage technologies across many markets.”
RA says it uses these maps to present a systems-level view to one another, to companies, and to its partners and collaborators.
Over the years RA Capital has been one of the most active investment firms in the private markets, having made a total of about 350 investments, according to crunchbase.com.
It currently holds 90 different VC investments, according to its website.
In addition, 122 private investments have either been acquired or went public via an initial public offering, according to RA Capital’s website.
This year it has so far made 31 new private investments, including 16 in the third quarter alone, according to crunchbase. That puts it on pace to exceed last year’s total of 45, another indication that interest in private investing has picked up, at least among life sciences companies.
