BOSTON– Third Rock Ventures today announced the closing of Third Rock Ventures Fund VI, raising $1.1 billion. Fund VI will continue Third Rock’s core strategy to discover, launch and build new groundbreaking companies focused on improving the lives of patients. Third Rock employs a hands-on approach to partnering with founders to build companies and provides early and rigorous integration of science, medicine, business and strategy to build successful companies.
“An important differentiator for Third Rock is the strength and maturity of our ideation ecosystem,” said Reid Huber, Ph.D., partner at Third Rock. “Our discovery pipeline is as robust as it has ever been, and with our established and proven model for integrating deep scientific and medical expertise with operational and business acumen, we are uniquely positioned to advance these innovations to patients.”
To date, Third Rock has raised $3.8 billion and its funds have invested in 60 companies. Importantly, companies across the portfolio have brought 18 products to the market across multiple therapeutic modalities and a broad range of disease indications including cancer, cardiovascular disease, depression, sickle cell disease, and rare genetic diseases among others. Fund VI is able to provide both initial Series A as well as follow-on capital to support companies throughout their lifecycle. Furthermore, Third Rock intends to allocate capital from Fund VI to invest in groundbreaking new companies from in the broader biotech ecosystem that are strongly aligned with Third Rock’s mission and strategy.
“We believe that people are our greatest asset, and we invest significant effort and resources to ensure we hire the best people at Third Rock and across the portfolio,” said Abbie Celniker, Ph.D., partner at Third Rock. “The internal team at Third Rock consists of ideators, experienced company builders, technology developers, and domain experts critical to the success of developing companies.”
The partners of Fund VI are Abbie Celniker, Ph.D., Neil Exter, Kevin Gillis, Reid Huber, Ph.D., David Kaufman, M.D., Ph.D., Cary Pfeffer, M.D., Robert Tepper, M.D., Ph.D., and Jeffrey Tong, Ph.D. Third Rock is also announcing today the promotion of Dodzie Sogah, Ph.D., to venture partner. Dr. Sogah came to the firm in 2021 as an entrepreneur-in-residence, and now joins an exceptional team of business and scientific leaders in the venture partner role.
“Over the course of our 15-year history, our focus on creating companies aimed at improving the lives of patients has not wavered,” said Kevin Gillis, partner and chief operating officer at Third Rock. “We have built a leading investor base that is supportive of our differentiated model that is hands on, team oriented, value creation driven, and built for the long term. We appreciate the strong support from existing limited partners and welcome our new investors.”
