While established venture firms continue to attract capital, first-time fund managers are facing one of the toughest fundraising environments in years. But that didn’t stop Sahir Raoof, a former SignalFire investor and executive at two healthcare startups, from raising $27.5 million for his first solo VC fund.
Raoof’s firm, Proximal Ventures, is betting that AI can transform the tools, infrastructure, and services that support drug development.
Pharmaceutical companies have historically outsourced various stages of drug development to specialized service providers, from synthesizing thousands of molecular compounds and figuring out how to manufacture drugs at scale to analyzing clinical trial data.
