Alberta Enterprise announced today that it has invested $5 million in Amplitude’s precision medicine venture fund to support the growth of life science, biopharma and digital health companies in Alberta. Amplitude’s experienced team has successfully created, built, and grown Canadian companies to successful IPO’s and value in excess of $1 billion.
“Our investment in Amplitude’s precision medicine fund is a milestone for Alberta Enterprise as it provides a new level of support for Alberta health innovators looking to grow and compete on a global scale,” commented Kristina Williams, CEO Alberta Enterprise Corporation. “Our investment creates access to specialized expertise, networks and capital for startups focused in the life sciences sectors, which represent more than 10 per cent of Alberta’s tech community.”
Amplitude’s fund, with over CAD$300M under management, is focused on precision medicine where world-class Canadian innovators are transforming the future of healthcare. Through the fund, Amplitude employs a unique model to accelerate growth of early-stage and emerging Canadian companies, like Deep Genomics and Notch Therapeutics, and create new companies like Radiant Biotherapeutics in collaboration with leading academic institutions.
Amplitude is led by partners Jean-François Pariseau and Dion Madsen as well as Western-Canadian Venture Partner Nancy Harrison, with cornerstone investment from leading Canadian Limited Partners. The Amplitude team has strong relationships with leading academic innovators and deploys a growth model that has successfully been used to build Canadian companies with world-class management teams and potential to exceed a billion-dollar valuation like Amplitude portfolio company Repare Therapeutics. With the investment from Alberta Enterprise, Amplitude will establish an Alberta presence to continue its engagement with the local Health Innovation ecosystem and focus on local investment opportunities.
“We’re pleased to have AEC as a partner in discovering and helping to scale the most promising Alberta-based health and medical innovators,” said Dion Madsen, Partner, Amplitude. “We are particularly interested in building on Alberta’s expertise in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning as the application of this technology to healthcare is the wave of the future as demonstrated by some of our early investments, like Deep Genomics.”
The partners of Amplitude have invested in Alberta and worked for Alberta companies in their prior funds, including Circle Cardiovascular Imaging, Cytovax Technologies and Sembiosys Genetics. Amplitude will continue to be actively involved in the Alberta health and life sciences ecosystem, and draw upon its partnerships with the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) Rockies and CDL Health stream as it works to build a quality health portfolio in Alberta.
