Kurma Partners

Managing Partners and co-founders Thierry Laugel and Rémi Droller lead the investment committee. Laugel previously founded a biotech company and brings operating CEO experience into deal evaluation, while Droller's background spans venture capital and scientific research. The broader partnership includes principals with PhDs and drug-development track records, giving the committee genuine bench depth when assessing preclinical assets. Final investment decisions rest with the managing partners.

Kurma's sourcing engine runs through long-term relationships with Europe's largest university-hospital systems, including Assistance Publique–Hôpitaux de Paris and similar networks in Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. The firm works directly with academic tech-transfer offices and principal investigators to identify research programs that need company-building capital and operational leadership. This academic-to-company funnel generates deal opportunities before the assets reach broader auction processes. The firm's Eurazeo backing gives it the institutional credibility to be the first call from a university licensing office.

Kurma operates three distinct fund strategies that together span the entire drug-development continuum. The Biofund series leads pre-seed and Series A rounds for companies still in preclinical or early clinical testing. The Diagnostics Fund targets molecular diagnostics and digital-health tools. Kurma Growth Opportunities provides larger growth-stage checks for companies approaching pivotal clinical trials or regulatory submissions. This structure allows the firm to back a company from formation through to a pharma trade sale without needing external co-investors to bridge stage transitions.

Kurma does not invest in medical devices, healthcare services, or consumer-health products. The firm's entire mandate is restricted to therapeutics, diagnostics, and adjacent digital-health tools that require regulatory approval and clinical validation. Within therapeutics, the firm has historically avoided me-too drug reformulations, preferring first-in-class or best-in-class biological approaches. The publication record shows no investments in companies focused predominantly on medical aesthetics or nutraceuticals.

Kurma actively co-invests with pharmaceutical venture arms and US-based life-science specialists, treating syndication as both a risk-management and relationship-building tool. The firm has co-invested alongside Novo Holdings, the corporate venture arm of Novo Nordisk, and with specialist funds like Jeito Capital. These relationships double as a future exit pathway, given that corporate venture arms often influence their parent companies' M&A pipelines. Kurma leads or co-leads its core Biofund rounds and takes active board seats, rather than passively following a lead investor.

Kurma Partners is a specialized asset manager, not a family office. It raises capital from institutional limited partners — not from a single-family balance sheet — with Eurazeo acting as a cornerstone LP across multiple fund vintages. The firm charges management fees and carried interest like a conventional venture capital or private equity fund manager. Its principals are compensated as fund managers, not as family-office employees.

Eurazeo, the publicly traded Paris-based investment group, serves as a strategic partner and anchor limited partner in Kurma's funds, but the firm operates with an independent investment committee. The relationship dates to Kurma's founding in 2009, when Eurazeo provided the initial capital commitment and operational infrastructure support. This structure gives Kurma access to institutional-grade back-office functions without ceding investment autonomy. Eurazeo's own investor communications regularly highlight Kurma as a key portfolio holding within its asset-management segment (per Eurazeo annual reports).