Sofinnova Partners Announces Two First Investments from its MD Start III Medtech Acceleration Fund
2.7.2020 08:00:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release
Sofinnova Partners, a leading European life sciences venture capital firm based in Paris, London and Milan, announced today the second investment from its MD Start III Fund, a medtech accelerator that actively works with clinicians and entrepreneurs to develop disruptive medical devices. In May 2019, the fund raised €48 million from key institutional investors and has made two seed investments so far: MastOR and Gradient Denervation Technologies. The most recent investment is in MastOR, a French company leveraging its core expertise in surgical robotics to develop enhanced laparoscopic devices to improve the precision and ergonomics of minimally-invasive surgery. The company was founded in 2019 by a renowned pioneer in laparoscopic surgery, Professor Brice Gayet of the Paris-based Institut Mutualiste Montsouris, and entrepreneur, Pierre Campredon.
“The Sofinnova MD Start team is known for its active, hands-on approach to company building,” said Prof. Gayet. “Their strategic and operational expertise is the perfect complement to the years of research and prototyping we have conducted thus far. Together, we will be able to accelerate the development of this game-changing technology and bring it to its full potential.”
MD Start III also invested in Gradient Denervation Technologies in February. The company is developing a medical device for a transvascular treatment of pulmonary hypertension, based on prior research and intellectual property developed at Stanford University. This has been an important area for MD Start, given its focus on interventional cardiology as a very innovation-savvy and fast-adopting medical community.
“These investments exemplify our mission of transforming innovative ideas into medical realities and backing inventors who are developing disruptive concepts for outstanding medical devices and procedures,” said Anne Osdoit, Partner at Sofinnova Partners. “Our network and partnerships have yielded a rich deal flow pipeline and we are confident in the potential for this fund to continue uncovering first-class devices that address major unmet medical needs.”
About Sofinnova Partners
Sofinnova Partners is a leading European venture capital firm specialized in Life Sciences. Based in Paris, France, with offices in London and Milan, the firm brings together a team of 40 professionals from all over Europe, the U.S. and Asia. The firm focuses on paradigm-shifting technologies alongside visionary entrepreneurs. Sofinnova Partners invests across the Life Sciences value chain as a lead or cornerstone investor, from very early-stage opportunities to late-stage/public companies. It has backed nearly 500 companies over more than 48 years, creating market leaders around the globe. Today, Sofinnova Partners has over €2 billion under management. For more information, please visit: www.sofinnovapartners.com
About MastOR
MastOR SAS is a Paris-based, early stage medical device company, developing a surgical robot for laparoscopy assistance. It is a privately held portfolio company of Sofinnova Partners, financed through the MD Start III Fund. The core technology is derived from joint research between the ISIR robotics lab at Sorbonne University and Professor Brice Gayet, a world-renowned surgeon and pioneer in minimally-invasive surgery. For more information, please visit: www.mastor-surgical.com
About Gradient Denervation Technologies
Gradient Denervation Technologies develops a device-based minimally invasive solution for the treatment of pulmonary hypertension with technology derived from an invention by clinicians from Stanford University. It is a privately held portfolio company of Sofinnova Partners, financed through the MD Start III Fund and based in Paris, France. For more information, please visit: www.gradientdenervation.com
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200701005947/en/
Contact information
Media Contacts:
Bommy Lee
Head of Communications, Sofinnova Partners
blee@sofinnovapartners.com
+33 (0) 6 47 71 38 11
North America
RooneyPartners LLC
Kate Barrette
kbarrette@rooneyco.com
+1 212 223 0561
France
StrategiesImage
Anne Rein
anne.rein@strategiesimage.com
+33 (0) 6 03 35 92 05
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
NetApp and Oracle to Launch Fully Managed Cloud Storage Service for Demanding AI and Enterprise Workloads29.9.2026 20:30:00 EEST | Press release
NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP), the Intelligent Data Infrastructure company, and Oracle today announced a new fully managed storage service that brings enterprise-grade NetApp storage natively to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). The service will bring NetApp ONTAP® data management capabilities natively to OCI to help organizations simplify the migration and management of critical AI and enterprise workloads in the cloud. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure NetApp Storage Service is designed to be a fully managed OCI-native storage service that brings NetApp ONTAP data management capabilities to OCI. It helps enterprises migrate, run, protect, and modernize databases, enterprise applications, virtualized environments, EDA/HPC, regulated applications, and AI data pipelines while preserving familiar storage operations. “Customers want the flexibility to move AI and enterprise workloads to the cloud without giving up operational simplicity, data management, and reliability,” said Pravjit Tiwana, Senior
NetApp to Expand Partnership with SAP to Support SAP Cloud Infrastructure29.9.2026 20:30:00 EEST | Press release
NetApp, the intelligent Data Infrastructure company, today announced its intent to expand its long-standing partnership with SAP, with plans to explore deeper cloud-native integration of NetApp capabilities into SAP Cloud Infrastructure, SAP’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform. The NetApp Platform supports key elements of the SAP Cloud Infrastructure storage architecture, delivering reliable, highly available and high-performance file and block storage services. The NetApp Platform also provides built-in proactive data protection capabilities and data replication to support SAP’s global availability model. “SAP and NetApp share a long-standing commitment to empower the world’s most mission-critical enterprise environments,” said Álvaro Celis, Senior Vice President, Chief Commercial, Partner and Ecosystem Officer at NetApp. “By bringing together SAP Cloud Infrastructure with the NetApp Platform, we can empower customers to build an intelligent data infrastructure that delivers the ag
NetApp Honors the International Union for Conservation of Nature with the Social Impact Award for Intelligent Data for Good29.9.2026 20:30:00 EEST | Press release
NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP), the Intelligent Data Infrastructure company, today announced that it awarded the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) the 2026 Social Impact Award for Intelligent Data for Good at NetApp INSIGHT 2026, NetApp's flagship global event dedicated to technological innovation, taking place in Las Vegas from September 29 to October 1. Part of NetApp’s Social Impact Awards program, this recognition honors customers and partners using NetApp technology in support of social or environmental impact initiatives. The Intelligent Data for Good category reflects NetApp’s commitment to recognizing and supporting organizations using intelligent data to improve lives and strengthen communities. IUCN is the world's largest and most diverse environmental network, bringing together governments, civil society organizations, and experts to advance conservation action worldwide. Uniquely composed of more than 1,600 government and civil society member organizations and 1
NetApp and Supermicro Collaborate to Power AI at Any Scale29.9.2026 20:30:00 EEST | Press release
NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP), the Intelligent Data Infrastructure company, today announced a strategic collaboration with Supermicro to deliver jointly validated AI infrastructure solutions spanning large-scale AI factories, enterprise deployments, neoclouds, and sovereign AI initiatives. By combining Supermicro's AI-optimized compute and rack-scale systems with the NetApp Platform, the companies will help customers accelerate deployment, improve GPU utilization, strengthen data governance, and reduce operational complexity. NetApp and Supermicro are creating a full-stack foundation for AI that extends beyond high-performance storage. The collaboration brings together Supermicro’s rack-scale compute, networking, power, and liquid-cooling expertise with the NetApp Platform’s unified data management, cyber resilience, hybrid-cloud leadership, and disaggregated scale. Customers gain an architecture that can be deployed quickly, evolve across generations of compute, and deliver a consistent data
NetApp Removes Storage Bottleneck for AI Factories29.9.2026 20:30:00 EEST | Press release
NetApp® (NASDAQ: NTAP), the Intelligent Data Infrastructure company, today announced NetApp Novus™, the fastest storage on the planet designed for AI infrastructure providers operating large GPU environments. Built to support a zettabyte-scale file system, this next-generation architecture will allow AI factories to keep millions of GPUs continuously fed with data, maximizing the efficiency, utilization, and profitability of their investments. Neoclouds and GPU-as-a-Service providers are building AI factories at a scale that traditional storage architectures were never designed to support, creating bottlenecks that reduce GPU utilization and increase infrastructure costs. Under traditional architectures, GPU utilization can drop below 30 percent when AI factories cannot feed enough data to their GPUs to generate the results they need and make a return on their investment. “AI factories struggle and GPU economics collapse when data can't keep up," said Syam Nair, Chief Product Officer a
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom