A healthcare investment fund has become one of Israel’s largest with a $660 million close

One of Israel’s single largest venture capital funds is a new later stage vehicle focused on healthcare.

The aMoon investment firm launched its second vehicle in April 2018 and it just announced its final close with $660 million in assets under management — making it one of the largest (if not the largest) firm in the country.

“We plan to leverage Israel’s ecosystem of breakthrough science and disruptive tech innovation to accelerate cure and reshape global healthcare.” said Dr. Yair Schindel MD, Co-Founder Managing Partner of aMoon, in a statement. “This raise is a vote of confidence for the Israeli HealthTech ecosystem that extends beyond Israel’s borders, to include the sizable community of Israeli entrepreneurs and researchers in global hubs, such as Silicon Valley and Boston.”

The firm’s second fund will have a strategy focused on later stage, lower risk companies in which aMoon will invest larger checks, according to an email from the firm’s co-founder and managing director, Dr. Schindel.

Ticket size for deals will range anywhere from $10 million to $20 million on the low end with the potential for follow-on investments ranging from $40 million to $50 million, Dr. Schindel said.

This larger check size is a function of the fund’s expansion. While the first aMoon fund was a $200 million, fund from a single limited partner (Marius Nacht, the co-founder and chairman of Check Point Software), the new fund counts 50 investors globally, including Credit Suisse which committed $250 million from their asset management and private banking groups. Goldman Sachs, also participated alongside an undisclosed Israeli investment firm.

Since its launch, aMoon 2 has made five investments in companies like Zebra Medical Vision, Cartiheal, Ayala Pharmaceuticals, Biolojic Design, and a still-in-stealth mode fifth company.

Broadly speaking, those deals align with the firm’s broader investment strategy which Schindel described as tackling diseases that are “either the worst killers or the largest cost-drivers of healthcare such as: cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and infectious diseases.”

For Schindel and his colleagues at the firm, Israel represents an incredibly fertile market for developing new healthcare technologies.

The country boasts highly curated electronic medical records for nearly the entire population dating back more than 20 years. That means Israel has one of the most complete electronic pictures of its national population health extant in the world today.

And the Israeli government recently launched a $272 million investment scheme into digital health projects over the next five years

“The biggest opportunity today lies in the convergence of technology and biology and the shift from care which is reactive to care which is predictive, preventive and personalized,” says Schindel in a statement.

And the presence of large consumer tech companies in the healthcare market these days, means good things to come for startup companies, according to Schindel.

:Their presence means a larger universe of buyers as well as a much faster pace of development in a relatively conservative industry which is currently undergoing a massive digital transformation,” he wrote in an email.