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
Record Currency Management wins new FX Alpha and Frontier Market mandates10.9.2026 18:30:00 EEST | Press release
Record Currency Management Ltd (RCM), a subsidiary of London-listed Record plc (Record Financial Group), is pleased to announce that it has been awarded two new mandates of strategic importance – an FX Alpha mandate and an FX Frontier mandate. RCM is the UK currency management arm of Record Financial Group, the London-listed specialist investment group managing over USD 122 billion of assets on behalf of institutional clients worldwide. Record’s client base comprises pension funds, foundations, sovereign institutions and other asset managers, with whom the Group has built long-standing relationships through its focus on bespoke investment and risk management solutions. Headquartered in London, Record has offices in Hamburg, Zurich, Zug, New York, and Hong Kong. For institutional investors, currency can represent both a source of risk and a potential source of differentiated returns. Live since 2012, Record’s FX Alpha strategy aims to deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns without cap
Azizi Developments Introduces USD 8.1 Billion Master-Planned Community Azizi Florence in Sharjah10.9.2026 17:08:00 EEST | Press release
Azizi Developments, a leading private developer in the UAE, is unveiling Azizi Florence, a USD 8.1 billion master-planned community marking its first project in Sharjah. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260910091949/en/ Azizi Florence (Photo: AETOSWire) The freehold development will feature 1,130 villas, more than 6,000 townhouses and 3,500 apartments, with three-bedroom townhouses starting from USD 515,000 at USD 231 per square foot of sellable area. Designed as an integrated destination, Azizi Florence will bring together residential, retail, hospitality, education, leisure and wellness offerings, centred around a 1.7-million-square-foot Central Park. Six residential clusters will each feature a park, clubhouse, community centre and landscaped gardens. Mr. Mirwais Azizi, Founder and Chairman of Azizi Group, said: “Returning to Sharjah after more than three decades is deeply meaningful to me, as this emirate w
Agentic Crypto Payments Have Surged by 500% 1 in the Last Three Months, Crypto Compliance Must Become Agentic Too10.9.2026 16:53:00 EEST | Press release
Elliptic,the global leader in on-chain risk, today published the Elliptic Standard: eight principles for governing agentic on-chain risk. Elliptic has been at the intersection of financial crime and on-chain finance since 2013, long enough to recognize the shift to agentic transactions as a defining inflection point in financial crime risk, and to be the first to define what governing it demands. On-chain finance is now running at agentic speed. Machines are originating, authorizing and settling transactions at a volume no human team can review. Illicit actors are using AI to evade detection at a speed and volume that manual processes cannot track. Models built around human review were never designed for this world. They are already overwhelmed. Three forces are driving this shift. First, autonomous agents are increasingly the counterparty on both sides of a transaction, not just people initiating activity for software to review: research from PHD and WARC2 projects agent-facilitated c
Wasabi Establishes AI Business in Silicon Valley, Taps Pinaki Mukherjee to Lead as Senior Vice President & General Manager10.9.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
Wasabi Technologies, the hot cloud storage company, today announced the formation of a dedicated AI business, and the appointment of semiconductor and storage veteran Pinaki Mukherjee as senior vice president and general manager to lead it. Wasabi stores hundreds of petabytes of AI data for frontier model labs, generative AI startups, and neocloud compute providers worldwide. This new AI business brings dedicated strategy, partnerships and go-to-market focus for this demand as AI infrastructure matures. “Mukherjee has a track record of driving the kind of high-value partnerships that move markets, and that’s exactly what this moment requires,” said Marty Falaro, president and COO of Wasabi. “AI workloads are pushing storage demand to a scale we've never seen, and Mukherjee is the right person to build the partnerships that extend Wasabi's position as the industry's choice for cloud storage, at the exact moment inference is reshaping what that storage needs to do.” Proven leadership in
Ant Group’s AI Health App AQ Reaches 150 Million Users as It Expands AI-powered Day-to-day Health Use Cases10.9.2026 15:47:00 EEST | Press release
At the 2026 INCLUSION · Conference on the Bund in Shanghai, Zhang Junjie, Vice President of Ant Group and Head of the Health Business, announced that Ant Group’s flagship AI health app AQ has reached 150 million users, handling nearly 20 million health inquiries per day. The new milestone also means AQ has grown its user base by 50% in just 8 months, since it announced 100 million users in February 2026, reflecting strong demand in China’s AI health space. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260910921103/en/ Ant Group’s AI health app AQ provides personalized health advice based on more than 10 health indicators. Health has become an increasingly important priority among Chinese consumers. According to Accenture’s China Consumer Insights report published in November 2025, the share of Chinese consumers who considered health a priority increased from 78% in 2021 to 87% in 2025, making it the top priority among the 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