Spain’s largest life sciences VC is advancing with InceptionBio, its inaugural fund focused on the most perilous phase of biotech: creating companies from university and research center spinouts. CDTI is an anchor LP. The aim is to create at least three new companies in 2026.
Converting academic science into a biotech company is toughest before raising a Series A, as it involves transforming a promising lab discovery into a legal entity, forming a founding team, and securing capital to generate preclinical data to attract institutional investors.
Most European life sciences funds avoid this stage due to its slow pace, high cost, and high failure rate. Ysios Capital is embracing it.
The firm, based in Barcelona and San Sebastián and managing over €400 million in assets, has launched InceptionBio: a €100 million fund solely for biotech company creation and early-stage investment, with a focus on Spanish scientific institutions.
The fund has secured a partial first close, with Spain’s Centre for Technological Development and Innovation (CDTI) as an anchor investor. It plans to establish at least three new companies by 2026.
InceptionBio will be led by Joan Perelló as Managing Partner and Arturo Urrios as Partner. Perelló, who joined Ysios as a Venture Partner in 2022, co-founded Sanifit, a renal disease biotech acquired by Vifor Pharma for €375 million, having raised over €140 million in equity.
Perelló’s background is in chemistry and analytical chemistry, and he has held leadership roles in various biotech and medtech firms in Spain and France.
The fund’s investment model focuses on technology transfer, collaborating with universities, hospitals, and research centers to find therapeutic discoveries ready for incorporation, and providing capital and operational support to build companies.
This pre-seed and seed phase aims to create pipeline-ready companies that Ysios’s later-stage funds or external investors can advance.
This approach complements Ysios’s BioFund III, its €216 million flagship vehicle launched in 2020, and its Telescope Biotech Fund, focused on listed biotech, which returned 52.5% net in its first year.
Founded in 2008, Ysios has backed over 40 biotech companies, including Stat-Diagnostica, SpliceBio, Ona Therapeutics, and Minoryx Therapeutics.
Joël Jean-Mairet remains as Managing Partner of Ysios’s main funds. The launch of InceptionBio represents the first time Ysios has structured a €100 million vehicle around company creation, addressing a gap in Spain’s life sciences funding landscape identified as both a strategic opportunity and necessity for the country’s research output to translate into durable commercial entities.