The healthcare industry is driven by AI, personalisation, and digital solutions in the US and Europe. Following this trend, Barcelona-based Nina Capital, a female-founded health tech VC investing across Europe and the US, has closed its €50 million Fund III.
The fund is anchored by LPs, including Seven Two Partners, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals from the US and Europe. This brings Nina Capital’s total assets under management to over €100 million.
Behind Nina Capital: Healthcare innovators
In 2019, Marta-Gaia Zanchi (former director of Stanford Biodesign’s Digital Health initiatives who moved from California to Barcelona) and Marc Subirats (co-founder of Advance Medical, sold to Teladoc Health for $352M in 2018) founded Nina Capital. Since its inception, the firm has invested in 50 companies across nearly 20 countries, impacting over 10 million people through healthcare technology innovations.
Speaking specifically, Nina Capital fills a gap in the European venture capital landscape at the intersection of healthcare and technology, focusing on early-stage investments. It aims to support need-driven founders developing healthcare technology solutions with international ambitions.
Marta-Gaia Zanchi told TFN: “Challenges stem from health systems’ unique market dynamics, reimbursement models/payer structures, regulatory environments, and, at times, underlying digital infrastructure. Nina Capital provides market-specific expertise, network access, and strategic capital to help healthcare technology startups scale across different geographies.”
The firm prioritises investments in companies across Europe, the United States, Israel, and Canada, addressing urgent healthcare needs, which aligns with the Stanford Biodesign methodology. It also assists European healthcare technology startups in accessing global markets and bridging the gap to Series A funding. By focusing on pre-seed and seed-stage investments, Nina Capital provides funding ranging from €150,000 to just over €1 million.
“We take an active role in the early stages — helping companies ‘cross the chasm’ from initial adopters to mainstream markets, refining their value proposition and go-to-market strategies, and opening our relevant, growing healthcare network. This means we remain deeply involved until post-Series A readiness,” Zanchi added.
Nina Capital’s Fund III: What do we know so far?
The completion of Fund III, anchored by contributions from a diverse range of limited partners, underscores the global belief in Nina Capital’s mission: to empower need-driven founders reshaping healthcare systems with information technology.
Andrew Macken, Managing Partner at Seven Two, commented: “Healthcare is at the forefront of a transformative era, where groundbreaking innovations are creating immense opportunities for both patient impact and investors. For the best outcomes in this complex industry, we believe it is important for managers to find great founders working on solving these significant problems and for those managers to help these businesses grow.”
The firm intends to invest from pre-seed to Series A, writing cheques between €250,000 and €1.5 million for startups across Europe, North America, Israel, and Australia for the first time. Investments will concentrate on Clinical Innovation and Education (diagnostics, medical devices, and clinician training), Healthcare Infrastructure (data-driven processes in preclinical R&D, clinical trials, pharmaceutical logistics, and manufacturing), and Clinical Pathways and Health Data (care delivery through tech-enabled services and operational efficiencies).
Also, the fund is disclosing the completion of Fund III’s first investment in Sonar Mental Health, a US-based mental health platform serving school districts nationwide that assists students through AI and human-led support. With two more investments in the pipeline for early 2025, Fund III reflects Nina Capital’s unwavering dedication to technologies that create meaningful, measurable healthcare impact.
Portfolio highlights: Mindpeak and Sober Sidekick
Nina Capital’s track record speaks for itself. Startups from Fund I achieved an above 80% graduation rate from seed to the next stage. Fund II portfolio companies collectively grew revenue almost fivefold within two years of initial investment. This momentum stems from the firm’s specialised team and ability to identify and scale impactful healthcare innovations.
One of its stars is Mindpeak, a Hamburg-based company developing AI-powered solutions to assist pathologists in cancer diagnostics. Mindpeak’s AI solutions have supported over 30,000 patient diagnoses, and its algorithms were among the first deployed for routine clinical diagnostics in the US and EU. In September 2024, the company raised $15.3M in a Series A funding round led by ZEISS Ventures and InnoVentureFund, with participation from AI.FUND and the European Innovation Council Fund.
Another inspiring startup is Sober Sidekick — a digital health app supporting individuals in addiction recovery, particularly those struggling with alcohol and substance use disorders. Sober Sidekick employs an “empathy algorithm”, ensuring every user receives peer support, aiming for a 100% response rate from the community. This approach has led to significant results, with the app reporting a 68% reduction in relapse rates for active users. The company secured approximately $2.8>in seed funding in October 2024, led by Nina Capital and HealthX, among other investors.
Zanchi concludes, “We continue to monitor the maturity and applicability of new data science, advanced computing (AI, ML), programming languages, cloud computing, cybersecurity systems, purpose-built databases, multi-sided software platforms, digital communication networks, and advanced sensing techniques. We are excited about the products and services enabled by all of these.”
