Civilization Ventures

What is Civilization Ventures?

Civilization Ventures is an investment firm established in 2017, based in San Francisco, California. They focus on innovative health tech and biology and look for cutting-edge innovations that offer solutions in rapidly growing markets.

With an overarching thesis that the future of healthcare is preventative, personalized, and regenerative, they back founders solving essential problems in this space. Civilization Ventures began with a $1 million ‘pilot’ seed fund and currently manages over $100 million in capital.

They have partnered with more than 60 innovative companies. Civilization Ventures also runs a unique Fellowship program that trains PhDs to become entrepreneurs, further strengthening the ecosystem they support. Their portfolio reflects their investment focus, having backed companies in diagnostics, digital health, gene and cell therapies, synthetic biology, telemedicine, and genetic testing.

Their investment parameters are a minimum of $50,000 and a maximum of $10 million, with a sweet spot around $1 million. They focus on pre-seed, seed, and Series A rounds and have assets under management of $35 million.

The firm boasts of 70 investments, 12 exits, and having supported 4 unicorns in seven years. Key milestones include the NASDAQ listing of Rocket Pharma, acquisitions of Singular Bio by Invitae and Lemonaid Health by 23andMe, and the acquisition of gene editing pioneer Rewrite by Intellia.

Their recent launch of the CV Opportunity Fund marks an evolution in their strategy to support founders through scaling phases, bringing their total capital under management to over $100 million. Civilization Ventures solidifies its influence by participating in significant industry moves, like the acquisition of Fluent BioSciences by Illumina to enhance single-cell analysis platforms.

What they say:

We are a venture capital firm dedicated to cutting-edge innovations.

What we look for: We invest in healthtech and biology.