About This Fund
Forbion Growth Opportunities Fund I C.V. is a late-stage life sciences growth equity fund managed by Forbion, the leading European biopharma investment firm. The fund closed its final round in April 2021 at €360 million — significantly above its original target of €250 million and at the hard cap — with a first close of €185 million in July 2020. Structured as a Dutch commanditaire vennootschap (limited partnership), it represents Forbion's dedicated growth strategy vehicle, designed to complement the firm's early-stage ventures franchise.
The fund pursues three distinct investment approaches within the European biopharma ecosystem: providing private growth capital to established clinical-stage biotechs with Phase II and Phase III assets; offering pre-IPO crossover capital to companies approaching a near-term public listing; and deploying targeted capital into temporarily undervalued publicly-listed biotech companies. Each investment is sized up to approximately €35 million, with a target portfolio of 10 to 12 companies. The fund's focus on late-stage therapeutic development with well-defined clinical catalysts is designed to offer a shorter capital deployment and return cycle than traditional early-stage VC vehicles, while still benefiting from Forbion's deep scientific diligence and sector expertise. Early portfolio investments included SynOx Therapeutics (Ireland), New Amsterdam Pharma (Netherlands), and Gyroscope Therapeutics (UK) — the last of which was acquired by Novartis, marking the fund's first significant exit.
The fund attracted a diverse institutional LP base including Pantheon, Eli Lilly and Company, the Belgian Growth Fund, New Waves Investments, Wealth Management Partners, KfW Capital (the German government development bank), and the European Investment Fund via the European Recovery Programme (ERP). Together, these LPs represent a broad cross-section of strategic pharma investors, government development institutions, and asset managers, underscoring the fund's credibility as a growth-stage biopharma vehicle in the European market.