First Berkeley Ecosystem Investment Made with Catena Bio

June 28, 2024 09:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time

PASADENA, Calif. & BERKELEY, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Freeflow Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm that invests in science-driven solutions to human and planetary health challenges, announced today that it raised $50M in new funds through its $35M Fund Two and $15M Opportunity Fund. Including a $25M Fund One and $15M in SPVs, Freeflow now has $90M in assets under management. In a challenging market for venture capital, Freeflow doubled its fundraising from the Fund One to Fund Two cycle. In addition, the firm announced its most recent investment into Catena Bio, its first into the Berkeley ecosystem of deep tech startups.

Freeflow began at Caltech in Pasadena, where the firm has made over 30 investments since 2020 into companies founded by the world’s leading scientists, including Nobel Laureates Frances Arnold (Chemistry, 2018), David Baltimore (Physiology or Medicine, 1975) and Bob Grubbs (Chemistry, 2005). The prominence of deep tech innovation and breakthrough science in Berkeley shares similarities to Pasadena. Building on top of the foundation created at Caltech, with an investment into Catena, Freeflow expands its ecosystem-focused operating model to Berkeley, providing Freeflow with deal flow from two of the top ten scientific research communities in the world (Source: Times Higher Education).

Catena Bio is at the forefront of next generation Antibody Drug Conjugate (ADC) technology with a novel conjugation that enables multiple payload capabilities for cancer treatment that can significantly improve patient outcomes. CEO and cofounder Marco Lobba worked on the underlying Catena technology when he was a PhD student at UC Berkeley in the labs of Matt Francis, Professor and Emeritus Chair of the Department of Chemistry at UC Berkeley, and Jennifer Doudna, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (2020) for co-inventing CRISPR, the gene-editing technology, and the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences and Professor of Molecular Therapeutics at UC Berkeley. Catena is also a member of the Bakar BioEngenuity Hub at UC Berkeley.

“This new funding enables us to expand our model to Berkeley, an important addition to our operating model because it shares so many similarities to Caltech and JPL where amazing founders working on large-scale solutions to important problems continue to create high quality investment opportunities. These two communities align very nicely with our focused thesis on human and planetary health,” said David Fleck, founder and managing partner, Freeflow Ventures.

About Freeflow Ventures

Freeflow is an early stage venture capital firm that invests in large-scale opportunities to improve human and planetary health. Founded in 2019, the firm has built an investment and support model for the groundbreaking innovation of Caltech and Berkeley. To date, Freeflow has invested in over 30 companies that blend fundamental and computational science to scale sustainable solutions to intractable problems. Visit https://www.freeflow.io/ to learn more.

Contacts

Steve Roy
617-642-9783
steve@freeflow.io

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