Forbion Raises €2.3B Across Two Life Sciences Funds

Forbion has raised €2.3B ($2.6B) across 2 new life sciences funds, the largest fundraising in the firm's history. The October 6, 2026 close gives Forbion separate pools of capital for therapeutics companies at different stages of development and lifts the firm's reported assets under management to approximately €7.5B.

The 2 vehicles are Forbion Growth Opportunities Fund IV and Forbion Ventures Fund VIII. Together, they can finance approximately 30 portfolio companies, and Forbion says the first investments have already been made. The official announcement says the fundraising exceeded its target, but it does not disclose the target or how the €2.3B is divided between the funds.

The scale matters because biotech does not face one financing problem. A team building a company around an academic asset needs a different investor, risk appetite, and operating support than a later-stage biopharma company preparing for more expensive clinical development. Forbion has raised capital for both points in that journey at the same time.

What Forbion Raised

Forbion Ventures Fund VIII will invest in therapeutics-focused biotech companies. Its mandate includes existing businesses and new ventures built around promising assets and proven teams, extending Forbion's venture strategy across company creation and early development.

Forbion Growth Opportunities Fund IV focuses primarily on later-stage biopharma companies in Europe and North America that are developing therapies for areas of high medical need. That strategy enters after more of the scientific and clinical work is visible, but when the capital required to continue development can become much larger.

The combined €2.3B is therefore not a startup round and not one fund with a single mandate. It is committed capital across 2 vehicles built for different stages of biotech risk. The official release names MN, PGGM, KfW Capital, Kauffman Foundation, and Eli Lilly and Company among the participating institutions and corporates, with support from both existing and new investors.

Why the Two-Fund Structure Matters

Drug development forces capital providers to make repeated decisions before a medicine reaches patients. An asset may begin with compelling biology, move through company formation, enter clinical testing, and then require substantially more money to generate late-stage evidence or prepare for commercialization. Each step changes the technical, regulatory, and financial risk.

Forbion's paired strategy creates continuity without pretending those risks are identical. Ventures Fund VIII can back therapeutics companies and new ventures closer to formation. Growth Opportunities Fund IV can support later-stage biopharma companies in Europe and North America. The manager can participate across the broader development cycle while each vehicle keeps a distinct mandate.

That structure is especially relevant when capital is scarce. Managing Partner and Co-Founder Sander Slootweg described a market characterized by a general shortage of capital. The new funds give Forbion more capacity to select and finance companies pursuing therapies for high unmet medical needs, while the firms themselves still have to produce clinical evidence strong enough to justify the next commitment.

Forbion's Fundraising Trajectory

The latest close follows another large fundraising cycle. In October 2024, Forbion announced more than €2B across 2 predecessor vehicles: €1.2B for Growth Opportunities Fund III and €890M for Ventures Fund VII. That announcement brought AUM to €5B at the time.

The new €2.3B close raises reported AUM to approximately €7.5B. General Partner Robbert van de Griendt, who leads Investor Relations and Impact, said the fundraising reflected investor confidence in Forbion's ability to deploy capital in a demanding market. The firm did not disclose individual commitments, fund economics, or vehicle-level sizes in the October 2026 announcement.

Forbion's roots reach back to ABN AMRO Capital Life Sciences. The team spun out as an independent firm in 2006, and official twentieth-anniversary material identifies Sander Slootweg, Martien van Osch, Geert-Jan Mulder, and Sander van Deventer as co-founders. The firm now operates from the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States.

The Record Behind the Raise

Forbion reports that it has financed 142 companies, including 37 created by the firm. Its portfolio companies have produced 21 approved medical products that have reached more than 1.6M patients globally. Those figures come from Forbion and should be read as company-reported measures, not an independent audit of fund performance.

The numbers still explain the institutional proposition. Limited partners are backing a specialist platform that combines scientific evaluation, company creation, venture investing, and later-stage growth capital. The firm's current organization includes more than 35 investment professionals and a broader network of operating expertise across biotechnology and drug development.

For Europe's biotech ecosystem, the practical question is how effectively that capital crosses the development handoffs where companies often become more expensive before they become less risky. The 2 new funds give Forbion room to support approximately 30 companies across those handoffs. The outcome will be measured in the therapies that survive development, the companies that can keep financing credible science, and the patients who eventually receive something that began as an investable experiment.