San Francisco venture capital firm Breakout Ventures announced the close of a $114 million fund to support founder-led companies working at the nexus of science and artificial intelligence.
Breakout’s Fund III brings together new investors Jimco and Korea Omega Investment Corporation alongside returning partners Cortes Capital, S-Cubed Capital, The Kraft Group, Pinegrove Venture Partners and an affiliate of LH Capital.
The new fund is being actively deployed, with seed investments already being handed out to several startups, including a stealth-mode company spun out of the University of Chicago focused on small-molecule discoveries using computationally enhanced chemical analysis.
Breakout Managing Partner Julia Moore called Fund III the firm’s most ambitious chapter yet, supporting founders “doing the most valuable work in science and technology today.”
Breakout founder and Managing Partner Lindy Fishburne described the firm’s investment approach to Fierce Biotech in 2023, saying Breakout asks prospective portfolio companies for detailed plans on how they will use the funds, measure milestones and achieve market validation. Breakout also views past investments to determine whether the companies met their previously stated goals.
Breakout’s new fund builds on the success of its second iteration, launched in 2021. Breakout’s Fund II was the lead investor in monoclonal antibody delivery technology company Surf Bio, which Halozyme Therapeutics acquired for $300 million upfront plus $100 million in milestone payments in January.
Breakout was also an investor in Noetik, which licensed two cancer research foundation models to GSK for $50 million upfront in early 2026.
Breakout’s first fund scored a win with medical diagnostics company Cytovale, which developed the first FDA-approved AI-powered rapid sepsis diagnostic used in emergency departments.