Elbit Systems joins Peregrine Ventures’ New NIS 300 Million Investment Consortium for Medical startups

Lior Shahory, general partner at Peregrine Ventures and CEO of Incentive Incubator. Photo – Yossi Zwecker

Peregrine Ventures, an Israeli investment firm dedicated to supporting life-changing healthcare opportunities, established a consortium of leading companies and research institutes that will invest NIS 300 million in medical startups. The new members of Peregrine’s Incentive Incubator include global pharmaceutical leader Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), medical devices and diagnostics company BD (Becton Dickinson and Company) and Elbit Systems.

Peregrine’s Incentive Incubator will focus on the disciplines of targeted medical therapeutics, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and advanced diagnostics (innovative sensors, omics analysis, algorithmics) for identification, monitoring, and personalized medication, alongside breakthrough medical devices, such as AI-integrated robotics and sense-based specific therapies, among others.

Israelis have been leaders in the world in developing new medical technologies and treatments for diseases like cancer. And a number of Startup Nation firms have already made headlines in the month of July. For example, Diagnostic Robotics, an Israeli medtech startup from Kira Radinsky that uses artificial intelligence (AI) in its platform that helps to predict how patients will respond to certain treatments, raised $45 million in a Series B funding round in July.

Then there is Eleven Therapeutics, an Israeli medtech and biotechnology startup that uses AI in nucleic acid therapeutics. Founded in 2020, Eleven Therapeutics declares that it is ushering in the next generation of RNAi therapeutics by combining artificial intelligence (AI), massively parallel functional assays, and combinatorial chemistry.

Also joining are medical institutions from Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Shaare Zedek Medical Center. The consortium will jointly develop startups operating in and graduates of Peregrine’s technology incubator which was established following the firm’s consecutive win of the Israel Innovation Authority’s incubators tender.

Founded in 2002, Peregrine’s Incentive Incubator is one of Israel’s most successful technological incubators and a leader in global life sciences. Utilized as an anchor for developing new ventures and supporting pre-seed, seed, and early-stage investments, the incubator leverages Peregrine’s decades of experience and substantial investments to guide young life science companies through the early phases of development. This growth is fed by Peregrine’s various dedicated investment vehicles designed to support life sciences technologies in different stages of development, from pre-seed to late growth to pre-IPO companies and everything in between.
The incubator’s model has yielded extraordinary results to date. Notably, of the 60 companies that were established in the incubator, 34 of them remain active companies. The aggregate value of companies that have graduated from Incentive Incubator has reached the $5 billion mark. Peregrine and the incubator have achieved an impressive number of exits. Some of the partnership’s most noteworthy include Valtech Cardio which was sold to Edwards Lifesciences for $690 million, CartiHeal, which was acquired by Bioventus for $500 million, Cardiovalve, which was recently sold to Venus, Eximo Medical which was sold to AngioDynamics and Neovasc.

Eyal Lifschitz, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Peregrine Ventures said, “The establishment of this consortium will enrich and diversify our ability to lead young life sciences ventures, support them financially in every phase of their lifecycle including follow-on investments in their growth stages, and lead them to success in the global market. This is an integrated, global, and elite team that has the confidence in the ability of Israeli entrepreneurs to develop the next generation of successful medical companies. All the while improving patients’ quality of life and lowering global mortality. Besides the extensive capital that is available as a result of this consortium, all parties will harness their professional networks, industry know-how, and business relations to ensure the success of these important medical technology startups.”

Lior Shahory, General Partner at Peregrine Ventures and CEO of Incentive Incubator stated, “The integration of all the strategic shareholders, research institutes, and technological partners will lead to a substantial leap forward in the initiation of global medical technology companies and their success.”