Frazier Life Sciences on Thursday said it has closed a new venture capital fund for startup creation and investing in early-stage biotechnology companies, raising $1.3 billion.
Frazier is the third life sciences investor to announce fresh funding in the last two months, following Omega Funds’ $647 million raise and Deerfield Management’s $600 million fund.
“We look forward to continuing to work with exceptional entrepreneurs to advance therapeutic programs with the potential to address significant medical needs,” Patrick Heron, a managing partner at Frazier, said in a statement.
Frazier has made many of its recent investments in oncology, funding drugmakers such as Alentis Therapeutics, Tubulis and Enlaza Therapeutics. It’s also put capital into other emerging areas of drug research, such as with kidney disease treatment developer Maze Therapeutics and TYK2 drugmaker Sudo Biosciences. According to the investment bank William Blair, Frazier was one of the sector’s most active venture investors in 2024, participating in 17 deals and leading almost one-third of those.
The firm’s early-stage bets have paid dividends. Scorpion Therapeutics, whose Series C round Frazier co-led last year, sold one of its drugs to Eli Lilly in a deal worth as much as $2.5 billion. And two of its investments, Metagenomi and MBX Biosciences, priced initial public offerings last year.
Frazier, which invests in both public and private biotechs, last closed a nearly $1 billion fund designed to support both early and mid-stage companies in 2022. It added $630 million last year to its pool of “evergreen” capital for long-term investing for small- and mid-cap public biotechs.
Some of Frazier's investments have also led to payouts, most notably with Novartis' acquisition of Chinook Therapeutics for $3.5 billion and Vertex Pharmaceuticals' purchase of Alpine Immune Sciences for $4.9 billion.
Biotech investing is slipping, however, as broader concerns over scientific funding in the U.S., pharmaceutical tariffs and regulatory uncertainty weigh on the life sciences sector. Venture funding in seed and Series A rounds has dropped off significantly, as investors grow more conservative, according to a recent report from HSBC Innovation Banking.
HSBC found that, in the second quarter of 2025, overall venture funding for biotech fell from $7 billion to $4.8 billion, one of the lowest quarterly totals in recent years.
