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Finance Watch: Scion Life Sciences Launches With $310m Inaugural VC Fund

Apple Tree Veterans Form New Firm

 
• By Mandy Jackson

Private Company Edition: Scion’s first fund exceeded its initial $250m fundraising goal. Also, The Column Group’s incubator raised a $400m-plus fund and Seroba’s fourth fund reaches $134m, while Neurona raised a $120m financing and Cour closed a $105m series A round.

Finance Watch Private Company
• Source: Shutterstock

Scion Life Sciences, an affiliate of the health care investment firm Petrichor, launched on 7 February with two friends and former Apple Tree Partners (ATP) colleagues – Scion co-founders and managing partners Sam Hall and Aaron Kantoff – at the helm. The new venture capital firm raised $310m for its inaugural fund, which it will use to build and fund new drug developers as it establishes an initial portfolio of six to seven biopharmaceutical companies.

“We actually started with a $250m target and had a really positive experience … and the interest and momentum enabled an oversubscription beyond our hard cap, which was initially $300m,” Kantoff explained

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