Ysios Capital launches €100M biotech fund
▼ Summary
– Ysios Capital, Spain’s largest life sciences VC, has launched a new €100 million fund called InceptionBio dedicated to creating biotech companies from academic spinouts.
– The fund specifically targets the high-risk, pre-seed stage of converting lab discoveries into legal entities with founding teams and initial preclinical data.
– Spain’s Centre for Technological Development and Innovation (CDTI) is an anchor investor, and the fund aims to establish at least three new companies in 2026.
– The fund will be led by Joan Perelló, who brings operational experience from co-founding and selling a biotech company, and Arturo Urrios, who joins from other venture firms.
– This fund addresses a gap in Spain’s funding landscape by focusing on company creation, complementing Ysios’s existing later-stage investment vehicles.
The most challenging phase in biotech company creation often occurs long before a Series A round is even a possibility. It is the critical, high-risk period where a promising scientific discovery must be transformed into a viable legal entity, equipped with a founding team, and funded sufficiently to produce the preclinical proof-of-concept that attracts institutional capital. Many European life sciences venture capital firms avoid this stage due to its cost, complexity, and high failure rate. Ysios Capital, Spain’s largest life sciences VC, is now tackling it head-on with the launch of a dedicated €100 million fund.
This new vehicle, named InceptionBio, is specifically designed for early-stage investment and company formation, with a strong focus on spinning out ventures from Spanish universities and research centers. The fund has achieved an initial partial close, with Spain’s Centre for Technological Development and Innovation (CDTI) serving as the anchor limited partner. Its goal is to establish a minimum of three new companies during 2026.
Leading the fund will be Joan Perelló, appointed as Managing Partner, and Arturo Urrios, who joins as Partner. Perelló brings significant operational experience from co-founding renal disease biotech Sanifit, which was later acquired by Vifor Pharma. Urrios’s background includes roles at Wellington Partners and Merck’s corporate venture arm, M Ventures. Their combined expertise will be directed at technology transfer, working directly with academic institutions to identify therapeutic discoveries and provide the capital and operational framework to build companies around them.
This pre-seed and seed stage strategy is designed to fill a pronounced gap in Spain’s innovation ecosystem. The primary objective is not immediate financial return but the creation of pipeline-ready companies that can be advanced by Ysios’s later-stage funds or external investors. InceptionBio complements the firm’s existing €216 million BioFund III and its public equities vehicle, the Telescope Biotech Fund.
For Ysios, a firm founded in 2008 with a history of backing over 40 companies, this marks a strategic move upstream. The launch addresses a structural necessity, ensuring the country’s robust research output can evolve into durable, independent commercial entities rather than being licensed abroad or sold prematurely. Joël Jean-Mairet continues as Managing Partner of the firm’s main funds, supporting this expanded focus on the foundational stage of biotech venture capital.
(Source: The Next Web)