Sofinnova Partners has closed its Digital Medicine I fund at $200m, with the venture capital (VC) firm investing in five companies through the strategy.
The two most recent additions to Sofinnova’s portfolio were artificial intelligence (AI) companies L’école AI and Betteromics.
Announcing the investments on the same day as its fund close, Sofinnova has injected $20m into US-based Betteromics via a Series A financing round, and $3m into France-based L’école AI via seed funding.
Betteromics has developed an AI cloud platform that integrates omics data – eliminating data silos and streamlining AI-generated insights. The software-as-a-service software can be tailored depending on the use such as biotech manufacturing or diagnostic product development.
L’école AI is building a user interface for AI to increase accessibility to the emerging technology. The company aims to provide medical professionals and researchers with a bespoke AI assistant.
Sofinnova launched the Digital Medicine Strategy in March 2023. Speaking to Medical Device Network at the time, Edward Kliphuis, partner at Sofinnova at co-leader of the strategy, said the fund would target early-stage companies that are leveraging digital technologies to transform healthcare.
Sofinnova has also invested in Munich-based Deepc, South Korea-baed Kiro, and London-based BioCorteX. The companies all leverage AI in their healthcare products.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently updated its list of AI/machine learning-enabled devices, highlighting the year-over-year increase of submissions for the technology to exceed 30%.
A 2023 report by GlobalData predicts that global revenue for AI platforms across healthcare will reach $18.8bn by 2027.
Sofinnova partner and co-lead of the digital medicine strategy Simon Turner said: “We bring Sofinnova’s deep healthcare expertise to entrepreneurs pioneering at the forefront of digital medicine where biology meets tech-industry approaches like rapid product iteration and accelerated commercialisation.”
