Lightstone Ventures joins with Singapore for $50M fund

The Singapore Economic Development Board's investment arm, EDBI, has co-invested with Singaporean sovereign investment fund Temasek Holdings a total of $50 million into U.S. life sciences fund Lightstone Ventures to set up a new local fund arm. 

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong

The new fund is focusing on the investment of Singapore-based life sciences technologies and companies, and will operate as a Singapore-based company. The wholly-owned local subsidiary, Lightstone Singapore, has been set up to fund, seed and catalyze locally created technologies to advance the country's life science industry.

The life science industry in Singapore is huge, with the country spending more than SGD$1.49 billion on biomedical research and development annually. Employment has equally been booming, with biomedical R&D doubling from 2,200 to over 5,000 from the year 2000 to 2010.

"The Singapore Government has invested a tremendous amount of resources into the local life sciences ecosystem over the past decade," Lightstone Ventures General Partner and Team Leader Mike Carusi said in the release.

"As an active investor in this sector since 2001, Lightstone's focus on technology commercialization will complement our investment strategy, and will help strengthen the local Biomedical Sciences ecosystem," Chu Swee Yeok, CEO and President of EDBI said in the release.

- here's the release

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