Millions of venture capital being deployed against COVID-19 pandemic. We can’t stand still. We have to act extremely fast.

Today SOSV announced that we have millions of dollars in additional immediate funding available for life sciences entrepreneurs who are working on brand new solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic (IndieBio will fund up to eight COVID-19 Startups in next six weeks).

We have teams and staff set up who are working relentlessly to help. Scientists, medical doctors, entrepreneurs, investors. More importantly, there are hundreds of deep-tech startups that we’ve backed in the last eight years that are training their sights on COVID-19.

And we’re helping them, with emergency funding as necessary, to pivot to take on the challenge. We’ll likely invest about $10 million in the next several months against COVID-19, which will likely be matched by another $50 million in investment by investors in our consortium.

Startups are already combatting the virus.

Over a dozen startups in our portfolio are actually on the front lines of the COVID-19 response, working in diagnostics, therapeutics, prevention and disinfection technologies, test automation, as well as some just improving the day-to-day lives of those stuck at home. Here’s a quick look at some of them:

  • Renegade Bio has reduced 4 steps of the CDC COVID-19 tests to 1, cutting out 2 hours of the testing process, reducing the cost by half and increasing the throughput of qPCRs testing by 4x.
  • Caspr.bio is rushing to market a “Crispr Cas12”-based diagnostic test that is cheap enough and easy enough to operate for office or home use, with results reported in 1 hour.
  • Verdex has developed a nanofiber material that makes more breathable and safer masks for caregivers.
  • OACP has reagents that are 20% faster and less expensive than the US FDA/CDC reagents, and are AVAILABLE in quantity.
  • OpenTrons has a liquid handling robot for small/medium scale laboratories that can automate testing to enable thousands of tests every day in hospitals anywhere.
  • Youibot has disinfection and inspection robots that can be deployed in public areas or workspaces.
  • Strados offers a COPD feedback monitoring system that would be able to report automatically to the doctor on unusual lung activity.

View the full list here

Through our accelerator programs — HAX, IndieBio, Chinaccelerator, MOX, Food-X, and dlab — we back passionate entrepreneurs who want to change the world for the better. We are very grateful for their efforts, their ingenuity, and the dedication in their hearts to tackling the world’s most difficult and urgent problems.

If you or someone you know needs funding for a life sciences startup with a solution for COVID-19, please apply at indiebio.co/indiebio-covid-response before April 10th.

With IndieBio, we are backing entrepreneurs who want to solve humanity’s biggest, most pressing problems using biology as technology. Let’s keep working on solutions, now, together.

Further reading:

Startups, apply now!

Others looking to help:

If you are looking to help accessing or purchasing products, or want to speed the market entry of any of these teams or technologies, please feel free to contact Joe.Hurd@sosv.com, who is heading up SOSV-wide Covid-19 commercialization efforts.

To syndicate investors interested in investing in particular SOSV startups, please contact Daniel.Eichner@sosv.com. Note that this is not a solicitation or offering, but we could help connect you to startups of interest.