Avalon Ventures is an early stage venture capital fund particularly focused on making investments in information technology, biotechnology, healthcare, pharmaceutical, venture capital and life sciences. 

Brief history

Founded by Kevin Kinsella in 1983, Avalon Ventures has since grown to manage four funds:

• Avalon Ventures VII, LP – announced on 4 March 2005 and raised US$200 million
• Avalon Ventures IX – announced on 11 January 2011 and raised US$200 million
• Avalon Ventures X – announced on 30 August 2012 and raised US$200 million
• Avalon Ventures XI – announced on 14 September 2016 and raised US$116 million

Since its inception, the company has made 157 major investments of which 47 were lead investments. 

Geographically

With offices in La Jolla, California, and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, Avalon Ventures serves the Greater San Diego Area on the West Coast of the Western United States. Not limited to local investment, Avalon Ventures has also made investments in companies in other countries, including the United Kingdom.

Significant Investments 

Avalon Ventures caters to all the stages of investment including seed, early stage, and late stage, but is particularly drawn to seed and early-stage companies. The company believes that this is the most rewarding, albeit challenging period of company creation. As former entrepreneurs, each member of the team at Avalon Ventures is passionate about pursuing disruptive ideas in continuously changing market environments. Some of the company’s most significant lead investments are Memrise, BotChain, and Synthorx. 

An investment of US$15.5 million into Memrise during the Series B funding round was announced in June 2018. Memrise is a United Kingdom-based language learning platform founded in 2010. With an investment of US$5 million, Avalon Ventures was announced as lead investor of the venture round of BotChain, an American information technology company specialising in using blockchain technology to enable universal registration and identity validation. Avalon Ventures also invested US$63 million into Synthorx during its Series C funding round. Founded in 2014, Synthorx is a biotechnology company located in La Jolla, California in the United States. 

Avalon Ventures in the News

As reported by the PE Hub Network in March 2018, Avalon Ventures and Marc Benioff, CEO, and founder of Salesforce invested US$5 million into Averon, a San Francisco-based mobile identity verification developer during Series A1 financing. Tech Hub reported in June 2018 that Octopus Ventures and Koreleya Capital would join Avalon Ventures in the Series B round of investment in Memrise, a United Kingdom-based startup that has developed an innovative language-learning app that adapts to users’ needs as they progress. The additional US$15.5 million in funding was allocated to expand the product. In 2016 it was announced that Avalon Ventures raised more than US$116 million for its 11th fund. Business Wire reported in December 2017 that Jnana Therapeutics received seed funding of US$50 million through an investment from Avalon Ventures, Polaris Partners, Versant Ventures, Pfizer R&D Innovate and AbbVie Ventures.