What Andreessen’s ‘Bio Fund III’ means for healthcare
Happy Tuesday, readers.
When Andreessen Horowitz pours money into an industry, word tends to get around. So when the venture capital giant pours $750 million into a single sector, you really know that something big is going on.
On Tuesday, Andreessen announced a third iteration of its biopharmaceutical and digital health fund, dubbed simply “Bio Fund III.” The firm used aspirational language to describe its ambitions and promote what is literally a three-quarters of a billion dollar fund.
“Software is now affecting not just how we do not just one thing—cloning DNA, or engineering genes—but how we do it all across the board, blurring lines, breaking down traditional silos, changing our processes and business models,” the company said.
This particular fund, launched four years after Andreessen’s initial bio fund, will focus on early-stage companies at the intersection of healthcare and technology.
What this all means? Let’s look over just some of the underlying trends.
Algorithms are now as important to the drug discovery process as petri dishes; consumer devices are tools of population health research; and the reality of a digitally connected world signals an opportunity for businesses to take advantage of this new paradigm.
So maybe it’s not too surprising that Andreessen is pouring this much cash into the effort—especially since it wants to get in on the ground level when it can.
Read on for the day’s news.
Sy Mukherjee
sayak.mukherjee@fortune.com
@the_sy_guy
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