Frank­furt a. M./Vienna — The Euro­pean venture capi­tal company APEX Ventures, based in Vienna and Frank­furt, is laun­ching a new fund, APEX Digi­tal Health. To this end, 50 million euros in capi­tal is to be gained. The focus of the new fund is on young compa­nies deve­lo­ping unique tech­no­lo­gies and appli­ca­ti­ons for the health­care sector.

Digi­tal health, or digi­tal health solu­ti­ons, is a growth market world­wide. The market in Europe alone is expec­ted to grow to around $170 billion by 2025, with an annual growth rate of around 39%, esti­ma­tes market rese­arch firm Graphi­cal Rese­arch. Due to the growing popu­la­tion, incre­asing life expec­tancy as well as incre­asing costs, there is a great need for new and inno­va­tive solu­ti­ons in the health­care sector. At the same time, there have been tremen­dous advan­ces in tech­no­logy in recent years, such as arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) and image analy­sis. In addi­tion, there are now a large number of young people who can handle these tech­no­lo­gies, as a lot has also happened in educa­tion and trai­ning, for exam­ple in the area of data analy­sis. This crea­ted the basis for setting up a tech­no­logy company at compa­ra­bly low cost.

APEX Ventures has been working inten­si­vely on this topic for some time and has alre­ady successfully inves­ted in seve­ral compa­nies from the digi­tal health sector with its first fund, APEX One: Image­Bio­psy Lab, for exam­ple, which uses AI solu­ti­ons to support doctors in ortho­pe­dic-radio­lo­gi­cal diagno­ses, and context­flow, which faci­li­ta­tes the work of radio­lo­gists with the help of a search engine for 3D CT scan images and Deep Lear­ning. Andreas Rieg­ler, foun­ding part­ner at APEX Ventures, said, “With the tech­no­lo­gi­cal advan­ces of the past few years, the incre­asing exper­tise in using these tech­no­lo­gies and the great need for new solu­ti­ons in the health­care sector, now is the ideal time to move even more stron­gly into this area.”

With Dr. Gordon Euller (36), a medi­cal doctor who brings inter­na­tio­nal expe­ri­ence as a specia­list in radio­logy, manage­ment consul­tant at McKin­sey and successful company foun­der, could be won as a part­ner for APEX Digi­tal Health. He opti­mally comple­ments the exis­ting team of APEX Ventures with his exper­tise and will be respon­si­ble for the selec­tion and moni­to­ring of the young compa­nies in which the fund will invest. Gordon Euller, APEX Part­ner Digi­tal Health, said, “New tech­no­lo­gi­cal deve­lo­p­ments offer an incre­di­ble amount of oppor­tu­nity to improve people’s health and make the day-to-day work of health­care profes­sio­nals easier. Howe­ver, the further deve­lo­p­ment and promo­tion of these tech­no­lo­gies, espe­ci­ally for the health­care sector, requi­res finan­cial resour­ces as well as entre­pre­neu­rial know-how. I am very exci­ted to be able to make an important contri­bu­tion here with APEX Digi­tal Health.”

The new fund will invest prima­rily in promi­sing Euro­pean start­ups and young compa­nies in the health­care sector. As with APEX One, the focus is on deep tech compa­nies in the DACH region. Howe­ver, invest­ments are also plan­ned outside Europe, e.g. in the USA and Israel. Fund­rai­sing will start soon after appr­oval by the Austrian Finan­cial Market Autho­rity (FMA) under the EuVECA (Euro­pean Venture Capi­tal Fund Regu­la­tion) direc­tive, which includes a Europe-wide appr­oval. In 2020, the fund­rai­sing is expec­ted to be comple­ted. Private, semi-profes­sio­nal inves­tors usually invest between 500,000 and 1 million euros and insti­tu­tio­nal inves­tors from 5 million euros.

About APEX Ventures
APEX Ventures is a Euro­pean venture capi­tal company focu­sed on tech­no­logy start-ups, based in Vienna and Frank­furt, which sees itself not only as a provi­der of capi­tal, but also as a “company buil­der”. The APEX Ventures team consists of the three foun­ding part­ners Andreas Rieg­ler, Chris­toph Kanne­ber­ger and Stefan Haub­ner as well as the members of the Advi­sory Board Hermann Hauser, Peter Hagen and Rudolf Kinsky. Support is provi­ded for young compa­nies with unique tech­no­lo­gies to deve­lop further and successfully bring their products to market. The first fund, APEX One, has so far successfully inves­ted in Euro­pean tech­no­logy compa­nies, inclu­ding AI, Insur­tech, Smart Data and MedTech. In Germany, APEX Ventures is supported by its stra­te­gic share­hol­der, asset mana­ger QC Part­ners. www.apex.ventures