Kairos Ventures Raises $58M Fund for Early-Stage Life Sciences Startups

Keerthi Vedantam

Keerthi Vedantam is a bioscience reporter at dot.LA. She cut her teeth covering everything from cloud computing to 5G in San Francisco and Seattle. Before she covered tech, Keerthi reported on tribal lands and congressional policy in Washington, D.C. Connect with her on Twitter, Clubhouse (@keerthivedantam) or Signal at 408-470-0776.

Kairos Ventures Raises $58M Fund for Early-Stage Life Sciences Startups
Can Venture Capital Help Unlock 'Underdeveloped' Caltech?

Kairos Ventures, a Beverly Hills-based venture capital firm funding early-stage life sciences companies, announced on Monday that it has closed its third fund with $58 million raised.

Kairos said its new fund has already invested in 27 startups including Vivodyne, a University of Pennsylvania spinout that cultures human tissue for experiments, and Linnaeus, a New Jersey-based cancer therapeutics startup.


Founded in 2015, the venture capital firm is known for backing physical and life sciences startups in their infancy, often as soon as they leave the university research labs in which they were incubated. Kairos initially focused on research coming out of Caltech, Chief Research and Development Officer Alex Andrianopoulos told dot.LA last year, but has since widened its scope to around a dozen other universities and has invested in more than 55 companies.

Kairos also provides no-strings-attached grants, typically ranging between $100,000 to $200,000, to academic researchers, founder and CEO Jim Demetraides told the Wall Street Journal. That approach “builds relationships” between Kairos and those university-stage, would-be startups once they are ready for their first rounds of venture money, Demetraides said, with the venture firm having funded around 120 research programs to date, he told the Journal.

Kairos previously raised $25 million for its first fund and $85 million for its second fund, according to PitchBook Data.

The news comes after another Los Angeles-based, health tech-focused investment firm, Wavemaker 360, raised $64 million for its second venture fund last week.

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EVGo’s Stock Surges on Better-Than-Expected Q4 Earnings

David Shultz

David Shultz reports on clean technology and electric vehicles, among other industries, for dot.LA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Outside, Nautilus and many other publications.

EVGo’s Stock Surges on Better-Than-Expected Q4 Earnings
Image from EVGo

Shares of EVgo are up over 20% today after the company released Q4 earnings that outpaced predictions from Wall Street. Analysts had predicted the company would announce a loss per share in the neighborhood of $0.16-$0.18, but the Los Angeles-based electric vehicle charging company reported a much more meager loss, to the tune of just $0.06 per share.

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AgTech Startup Leaf is Helping Farmers Brace for Unexpected Rainfall After Record Year

Samson Amore

Samson Amore is a reporter for dot.LA. He holds a degree in journalism from Emerson College and previously covered technology and entertainment for TheWrap and reported on the SoCal startup scene for the Los Angeles Business Journal. Send tips or pitches to samsonamore@dot.la and find him on Twitter @Samsonamore.

green leaf drawing and rolling farm lands
Evan Xie

At least 50,000 acres in the state of California are estimated to be underwater after a record-breaking year of rainfall. So far this year, California has received nearly 29 inches of rain, with the bulk being dumped on its central and southern coasts. Farmers are already warning that the price of dairy, tomatoes and other vegetables will rise as the weather prevents them from re-seeding their fields.

While no current technology can prevent weather disasters, Leaf Agriculture, a Los Angeles-based startup that launched in 2018, wants to help farmers better manage their properties by leveraging data.

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https://twitter.com/samsonamore
samsonamore@dot.la

Two LA Startups Participate in Techstars' 2023 Health Care Accelerator

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

Two LA Startups Participate in Techstars' 2023 Health Care Accelerator
Courtesy of Techstars

Earlier this month, Techstars announced that their 2023 accelerator program will have two simultaneous cohorts–Techstars health care and L.A. As previously reported on dot.LA, Techstars has brought on board returning partners Cedars Sinai, United Healthcare, along with new partners that include UCI Health and Point32Health for its health care cohort.

“For our healthcare program, this is the first time we've had multiple partners as sponsors,” Managing Director Matt Kozlov said. “This allows us to support and mentor a wider diversity of companies than we've been able to help historically.”

The in-person program is taking place in Los Angeles and two out of the twelve companies accepted into the health care program are based in Southern California.

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