Sahir Raoof, a former SignalFire investor and executive at two healthcare startups, has raised $27.5 million for his first solo venture capital fund, according to TechCrunch. His firm, Proximal Ventures, is betting on artificial intelligence to transform the tools, infrastructure and services that support drug development.
In a LinkedIn post, Raoof described Proximal as a first-check fund that “loves to partner with founders before incorporation to support ideation and initial GTM strategy.”
Historically, pharmaceutical companies have outsourced various stages of drug development to specialized service providers, from synthesizing thousands of molecular compounds and determining how to manufacture drugs at scale to analyzing clinical trial data.
“For a long time, the assumption was that pharma is not a great buyer of software, but a really good buyer of services,” Raoof told TechCrunch.
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Raoof believes AI could automate much of that work, creating an opportunity for startups to capture billions of dollars in pharmaceutical industry spending. These companies could use AI to deliver the same services at lower costs and in significantly less time, he said.
He added that some of AI’s most valuable applications so far have emerged in service-oriented industries such as law and finance, and sees similar opportunities in pharmaceutical services.
Proximal plans to invest in pre-seed and seed-stage startups, writing checks ranging from $500,000 to $1.5 million. The fund has attracted backing from several firms, including ChronicleBio, co-founded by former OpenAI executive Fidji Simo, which uses AI to analyze biological and medical data to better understand chronic diseases and identify potential treatments.
Other backers include venture capital firms SignalFire and Kleiner Perkins, Bertelsmann Healthcare Investments, and individual investors such as Dimension Capital co-founders Nan Li and Zavain Dar.
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Amy Abernethy, co-founder of Highlander Health and former principal deputy commissioner of the FDA, is also an investor. Abernethy, who first met Raoof while they were working at Flatiron Health, where she served as chief medical officer, told TechCrunch that his ability to build relationships and identify industry bottlenecks made a lasting impression.
Raoof previously led business development at clinical trial recruitment startup Iterative Health and oversaw partnerships at Flatiron Health, an oncology data company acquired by Roche for $1.9 billion in 2018. He later spent two years as a principal at SignalFire.
“If you’re building a company that’s selling into the life sciences, one of the hardest things to do is starting that initial commercial flywheel,” Raoof said.
“We are entering the golden age of biology. But realizing that promise will require changing the systems that turn scientific breakthroughs into treatments. From molecule to market, there has never been more room to build,” Raoof said. “Proximal Ventures brings together everything I’ve spent my career working toward. We’re backing founders who believe we can do better to accelerate scientific progress.”