Vivek Ramaswamy, a former hedge fund partner who went on to engineer one of the biggest biotech initial public offerings in history, has a new source of cash: his investment vehicle, Roivant Sciences, just raised $1.1 billion from investors including the Softbank Vision Fund and Dexcel Pharma.
Ramaswamy’s unique model is to raise large amounts of money for Roivant, which had previously disclosed a $700 million fundraising, and to use that fund to start still more companies, which in turn do their own fundraisings, either on the public markets or through a second set of private investors. Roivant has invested in a series of spinouts, including Arbutus (viral diseases), Axovant (neurology), Myovant (women’s health and endocrine diseases), Dermavant (dermatology), Enzyvant (rare diseases), and Urovant (urology). The new funding will go toward creating another ‘vant, called DataVant, focused on accumulating siloed data to help judge the odds of success for drugs in clinical trials. Ramaswamy was a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30, and was on the cover of Forbes in…