Fresenius launches €200M healthcare venture fund
German healthcare group Fresenius has created a corporate venture capital unit that plans to invest more than €200 million in healthcare startups over the next five years.
Why it matters: The fund adds more than €200 million of potential strategic capital to a difficult European healthcare financing market, with Fresenius offering portfolio companies medical, regulatory and operational expertise, as well as access to its clinical, scientific and academic networks alongside funding.
- It also signals that Fresenius wants to engage with emerging technologies earlier, potentially creating a new route to partnerships, licensing deals and acquisitions for young biotechs.
How it works: The fund will invest from early financing rounds through the growth stage, targeting areas adjacent to Fresenius’ three strategic platforms: biopharma, medtech and care provision.
- Potential investment fields include new therapeutic modalities, microbiome research, precision nutrition and digital care solutions, although Fresenius has not disclosed expected ticket sizes, geographic limits or how the capital will be divided between the sectors.
Zoom in: Fresenius has appointed Thomas Michael Thestrup to lead the new unit. Thestrup joins from Angelini Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Italy’s Angelini Industries. His previous positions include business development and strategy roles at Lundbeck and UCB, as well as life sciences investing at Danish venture firm Sunstone Capital.
Backstory: Founded from a German pharmacy business established in 1912, Fresenius has grown into a healthcare group employing more than 178,000 people and generating €22.9 billion in reported revenue in 2025.
- Its operations are now concentrated around two main businesses: Fresenius Helios, which operates hospitals in Germany and Spain and Fresenius Kabi, which sells injectable generic medicines, clinical nutrition products, medical devices and biopharmaceuticals.
Yes, but: Biopharma remains a relatively small but rapidly expanding part of Fresenius Kabi. The division generated €871 million in 2025, up 43% from the previous year, largely because of growing sales of Tyenne, its biosimilar version of Roche’s autoimmune drug Actemra. By comparison, Fresenius Kabi generated total revenue of €8.6 billion in 2025.
- Its biopharma activities span biosimilar development and commercialization, biologics manufacturing and CDMO services. The portfolio focuses primarily on autoimmune diseases, oncology, hematology and osteoporosis.
Between the lines: This appears to be Fresenius’ first dedicated, groupwide corporate venture fund, but it is not the company’s first financial commitment to biotechnology.
- In 2017, it acquired Merck KGaA’s biosimilars pipeline, focused on oncology and autoimmune diseases, for up to €656 million.
- In 2020, it formed an equally owned joint venture with Bio-Techne and Wilson Wolf to develop scalable manufacturing technologies for cell and gene therapies.
- In 2022, it paid about €495 million upfront for a 55% stake in Spanish biosimilars manufacturer mAbxience, adding biologics manufacturing and CDMO capabilities.
- Earlier this year, it licensed cell-selection technology from German biotech TQ Therapeutics for integration into Fresenius Kabi’s cell-processing equipment.
Why now: Fresenius is launching the fund while its traditional generics business faces a less predictable trade environment.
- Shares in the company fell about 1% on July 22 after U.S. President Donald Trump proposed tariffs of 100% on generic medicines imported to the U.S. from August 2028, rising to 200% one year later. Analysts warned that low-margin generic manufacturers could struggle to absorb the costs or relocate production.
- Fresenius argues that it is better protected than many competitors. The company says about 90% of group revenue is not exposed to U.S. tariffs and that roughly 70% of the medicines it sells in the U.S. are already manufactured domestically.
- Fresenius employs more than 4,000 people in the U.S. and says it has invested nearly $1 billion in local manufacturing and logistics infrastructure in recent years. Still, the company acknowledged that it would not be immune to the proposed measures.
The bottom line: Fresenius has already spent heavily to establish itself in biosimilars and biologics manufacturing. Its new venture fund moves that strategy further upstream, giving the German group a way to scout and finance emerging technologies before deciding whether to license, partner with or eventually acquire them.
