London-headquartered early-stage healthtech investor Spex Capital has announced the first €30 million commitment to its new €100 million Venture HealthTech Fund.
The fund will invest in early-stage healthtech startups worldwide from Seed to Series A/B with individual investments of up to €5 million. The goal is to help founders bring promising digital health and medical technologies to market faster, across major healthcare systems.
Claudio D’Angelo, CEO and Founder of Spex Capital, told TFN, “Spex Capital addresses the critical scale-up capital gap for healthtech companies in Europe. While there is an abundance of early-stage funding — often facilitated in the UK by favourable tax schemes like EIS and SEIS — capital for mid- and later-stage deals is severely lacking.
About 10% of healthtech funding deals in the UK are accounted for by series B and later-stage rounds. This shortage often forces successful European healthtech companies to seek larger, later-stage rounds in the US. Our goal is to fill this funding vacuum, ensuring that promising European technologies can scale in Europe.”
Focusing on digital health and medical technology solutions
Founded by serial entrepreneur Claudio D’Angelo, Spex Capital focuses on developing and expanding digital health and medical technology solutions in healthcare systems around the world.
D’Angelo told us, “Spex Capital was primarily driven by a recognised market need within a sector I was passionate about. I was looking to transition from public to private markets with a focus on impact verticals, and my strongest interest was in healthtech, specifically digital healthcare. I saw a clear opportunity for a specialised fund to focus exclusively on this growing, yet underserved, sector.”
The fund has access to innovative ideas through partnerships with EIT Digital, Europe’s largest innovation network, and Penn Medicine, a major health system in the USA serving over seven million patients each year.
D’Angelo explained, “Healthcare faces immense challenges worldwide with ageing populations creating growing patient demand and systemic cost pressures. Our true strength is not just the volume of companies we see, but the unparalleled power of our distribution network to provide them with essential commercial and clinical validation.
The supply is strong, but the validation we deliver through our network is the game-changer. Digital health tech is key to addressing these challenges, and with this fund, our new partnerships, and a world-class advisory network, we are uniquely positioned to support visionary founders delivering transformative solutions worldwide.”
The fund is also classified as an Article 9 impact fund under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR).
D’Angelo concluded, “Our primary objective over the next three to five years is to see our portfolio companies achieve significant traction and successfully graduate to later-stage growth. As this occurs, we plan to secure their continued success by eventually launching a continuation fund to provide them with the necessary follow-on capital.”
