Swiss Roivant bags US$1.1bn financing
Serial drug licensee Roivant Sciences GmbH (Basel) has cashed in US$1.1bn (€937m) in an equity financing led by SoftBank Vision Fund and co-financed by existing investor Dexcel Pharma.
The companys business is to acquire licences of depriorised compounds and develop these programmes within subsidiarys. Currently, Roviant is testing 14 compounds in six therapeutic areas through 39 clinical trials, mostly late stage.
The company announced it will use the the proceeds to fuel creation of new subsidiaries within and beyond biopharmaceutical development, including new technology-enabled Vants such as the artificial intelligence subsidiary Datavant, which aims at speeding up drug development through Big Data analyses. Current drug-developing subsidiaries include public Axovant (neurology), public Myovant (womens health and endocrine diseases), and Dermavant (dermatology), Enzyvant (rare diseases), and Urovant (urology).
We are pleased to welcome the SoftBank Vision Fund as a new investor in Roivant, and we are grateful for the continued support of our existing shareholders, said Vivek Ramaswamy, Founder and CEO of Roivant. Roivant has attracted world-class talent in its pursuit of developing and commercializing drugs that target large unmet medical needs, said Akshay Naheta, Managing Director of SoftBank Group International. Roivant has come a very long way in a relatively short period of time, said Dan Oren, President and CEO of Dexcel Pharma, a member of the Dexxon investor group which is both an initial investor in Roivant and a participant in the current financing.