Wellington Partners

Wellington Partners

Founded in 1998 in Munich, Wellington Partners has spent nearly three decades as a dedicated life-science venture investor. The firm's leadership rests with Managing Partners Dr. Rainer Strohmenger and Dr. Johannes Fischer, who oversee a team that includes Partners Dr. Varun Gupta, CFO Harald Keller, and Legal Counsel Ernst Mannheimer. The group raised its fifth and largest fund, WPLS V, at EUR 210 million after a heavily oversubscribed close. Wellington's investment strategy covers early- and growth-stage therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health. It also invests in industrial biotechnology. The firm writes initial checks at seed through Series B and follows on in later rounds across Germany, Switzerland, and broader European innovation hubs. Its current portfolio includes Confo Therapeutics, NUCLIDIUM, and AMB, while exits and IPOs span Actelion, Definiens, and Rigontec. In July 2025, Wellington co-led an EUR 84 million Series B for NUCLIDIUM to advance its copper-based radiopharmaceutical platform. The firm also participated in a $50 million Series C for Polares Medical in March 2026. Wellington deploys capital through a lean, science-heavy team of roughly 19 professionals operating from Munich and Zurich. The partnership includes a deep bench of venture partners — among them Dr. Bo Jesper Hansen, Stuart Essig, and Dr. Peter Hirth — who extend the firm's sourcing reach across European research institutions. In May 2026, portfolio company NUCLIDIUM closed a Series B extension that brought its total round to CHF 105 million, demonstrating Wellington's capacity to support portfolio companies through multiple financing cycles. The firm's administrative scale includes dedicated sustainability, finance, and project management functions. Wellington Partners' structural differentiator is its single-sector concentration in life sciences, a posture that yields a portfolio of pure-play therapeutics, devices, and diagnostics. Unlike multi-stage or multi-sector venture firms, the partnership carries no exposure to software, consumer, or industrial assets, making it a concentrated proxy for European healthtech innovation and creating a co-investment lane for institutional allocators seeking undiluted therapeutic exposure.