Canaan Partners brings in $675M for 10th fund, plots health-tech investments

Canaan Partners, a venture capital firm that’s been around for almost 20 years and that originally spun out of General Electric Capital, has closed $675 million for its latest and tenth fund.

The firm’s new fund will be quite similar to its previous three, general partner Dan Ciporin told VentureBeat. Canaan focuses on earlier stage investing, meaning first through third rounds. It also invests in the seed stage, often with the intent on following on as the company grows. About 80 percent of the firm’s investments are in these early stages, Ciporin said.

However, the firm considers itself diversified since it’s not focused solely on a particular investment stage and it doesn’t set aside a part of the fund for follow-on reserves or allocate for a specific numbers of deals at each stage. On average, including follow-on capital, Canaan’s investments are about $15-20 million per company.

Much like with its previous funds, Canaan will continue to focus on life sciences (about one third of its investments) and technology companies. Health-related companies in particular are likely to catch a growing interest from the firm.

“We have several investments that we just made in the digital health arena. I would not be surprised to see more investments in that area,” said Ciporin.

[To find out more about emerging technologies and startups in health tech, check out VentureBeat’s HealthBeat conference, Oct. 27-28 in San Francisco.]

Marketplaces and financial tech are other areas Canaan will likely continue to keep an eye on and invest in, Ciporin said.

The new fund will be managed by all of Canaan’s general partners, and the firm is also newly promoting Tim Shannon to managing partner. It has not started to make investments from the new fund; it plans to get the ball rolling in early 2015.

Some of Canaan’s previous investments include Kabam, Washio, Zoosk, Cardlytics, LendingClub, and Ebates, among many others. The firm has offices in New York City, Silicon Valley, and India, and it has an affiliate fund in Israel.