Even from our earliest days, we have been clear about why we were building Lux: to support extraordinary entrepreneurs, often outsiders, doubted by most, whose ambitions would transform the world through straight-out-of-fiction science and technology. We have always believed before others understood.
After all these years, we remain stubbornly focused on that same guiding principle. We are a committed team of unshakeable optimists with unwavering conviction in the equalizing power of science to benefit all, even when few others see what we see. We feel forever fortunate and sometimes amazed that we get to seek out and be sought by remarkable founders, rebels, and rule-breakers, who have allowed us to help them build their transformative companies, and by the limited partners — the endowments, foundations, institutions, and families — who have entrusted us as stewards of their own mission-driven capital.
Our ability to accelerate the arrival of that science-driven future advances further today with the closing of two new funds: Lux Ventures VII, LP, a $675M early-stage venture fund focused on seeding and backing founders as their first institutional investors; and Lux Total Opportunities, LP, an $800M opportunity fund to help support growth and propel the most promising scientific and technological breakthroughs. With the closing of these funds, Lux now manages $4 billion in committed capital.
We are only as good as the next founders we win the chance to partner with. We have always supported rebels and contrarians, those founders who simply cannot stop themselves from pushing boundaries of disciplines and ushering technology into realms that flirt with the impossible. With these new funds, we will test our own boundaries and challenge our sense of what’s possible. Even beyond the already astounding companies in the Lux portfolio, we will deepen our investments across the frontier of technology, from robots in labs discovering life-saving drugs and genetically-based medicine based on real-life superhumans to factories in space that build pure materials for life on earth. We are eager and excited to find and support those scientists and technologists who will help improve the lives of all humans.
During the extraordinary, difficult year of the global pandemic, so many of the entrepreneurs in the Lux family persevered and even thrived. In particular, we could not be more proud of these 12 companies, which have created an aggregate of over 3,100 direct jobs and more than $20 billion of enterprise value, and have been either acquired, have listed publicly or have announced their intention to list publicly: Zoox (acquired by Amazon, June 2020); Lux Health Tech Acquisition (October 2020); Thrive Earlier Detection (acquired by Exact Sciences, October 2020); Desktop Metal (December 2020); Aeva (March 2021); Latch (announced January 2021); Matterport (announced February 2021); Evolv (announced March 2021); Recursion (April 2021); Shapeways (announced April 2021); Science 37 (announced May 2021); and Bright Machines (announced May 2021).
The new funds are vehicles to reinforce our commitment to our rapidly growing Lux family of companies and expand the boundaries of what’s possible, to deepen our investment in those inventing our future and taking us all across new frontiers. If you would like to join us or want us to join you, we are at the ready….
–The Lux Team
