Li Ka-shing's Healthcare Investment Portfolio: From Longevity Supplements to Cancer Diagnostics
VCBeat (WeChat: vcbeat) has learned that on the afternoon of March 16, CK Hutchison Holdings Limited issued an announcement stating that Li Ka-shing would step down as Chairman of the Board effective immediately, with his eldest son, Victor Li Tzar-kuoi, succeeding him. Li Ka-shing will continue to serve as Chairman of the Li Ka Shing Foundation and as Senior Advisor to the CK Group.
Li Ka-shing, born in 1928 and now nearly 90 years old, has finally chosen to retire. According to the “2018 Hurun Global Rich List” released by the Hurun Research Institute in February this year, Li Ka-shing’s wealth amounts to RMB 190 billion, ranking him sixth in Greater China and 32nd globally.
Li Ka-shing has been focusing on the technology industry since 2000. The investments in this sector are primarily managed by Horizons Ventures, a firm founded in 2006 by his long-term partner, Zhou Kaixuan, which invests in startups focused on technology or disruptive innovations.
Since 2007, Horizons Ventures has solidified its position in the global venture capital community with a $120 million investment in Facebook. Other notable investments include Waze, Siri, and DeepMind.
According to its official website, the 87 projects invested in by Horizons Ventures are primarily categorized into data applications and disruptive technologies (mainly distributed across Israel and the United States), including a number of healthcare companies. VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) will provide an overview of the healthcare enterprises in its investment portfolio.
Impossible Foods is a U.S. food company founded in 2011, with its headquarters in Redwood City, California. The company produces “meat” and dairy products from plant-based ingredients such as soybean roots, wheat, and coconut oil, without using any animal-derived components in the manufacturing process. Its products are indistinguishable from real beef in terms of appearance, texture, and even cooking methods.
Impossible Foods has redefined vegetarianism, aiming to encourage people to abandon animal meat and thereby reduce the environmental harm caused by livestock farming.
As early as 2015, the fourth year since Impossible Foods was founded, Google proposed to acquire it for a high price of $200 million to $300 million, but this offer was rejected by Impossible Foods.
In August 2017, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation injected an additional $75 million into its existing investment. Since its inception, the company has completed seven rounds of financing, raising a total of over $270 million.
In addition to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Impossible Foods’ investor roster includes globally renowned venture capital firms such as Google Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Viking Global Investors, UBS, and Temasek Holdings, as well as Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures.
The renowned Hampton Creek, founded in 2011, has launched a series of plant-based egg products. The underlying principle involves extracting proteins from plants to serve as raw ingredients, which can be utilized in food production processes.
The primary ingredients are a blend of 12 non-GMO plants, including Canadian yellow peas and South Asian soybeans, which can be used to produce three egg-free products: Just Mayo, Eat the Dough, and Scramble. In addition to Li Ka-shing, Hampton Creek has also garnered support from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
In 2013, Hampton Creek officially launched its first product for the mass consumer market: Just Mayo, an egg-free mayonnaise. In February 2014, the company completed a financing round led by Horizons Ventures, the investment firm under Li Ka-shing. In addition to providing financial support, the investment was intended to facilitate expansion into Asian markets. However, in July 2017, four board members departed due to serious disagreements over business operations. Currently, only one member remains on the company’s board: Josh Tetrick, who also serves as CEO.
Owlstone Medical is a UK-based in vitro diagnostics company founded in 2004. It specializes in non-invasive diagnostics for cancer, inflammatory diseases, and infectious diseases, with the aim of saving 100,000 lives and $1.5 billion in healthcare costs. The company’s founder and CEO, Billy Boyle, graduated from the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge.
Owlstone Medical has developed BreathBiopsy, a respiratory biopsy device that employs a non-invasive method to analyze metabolites in patients’ exhaled breath, enabling early detection and real-time monitoring of disease activity, primarily for the early detection and diagnosis of conditions such as cancer, inflammation, and infectious diseases.
In March this year, the company announced that it had secured $15 million in financing, led by Horizons Ventures, with existing investors such as Aviva Ventures participating. Owlstone Medical’s total funding has now reached $31.5 million.
Misfit Wearables, a U.S.-based startup specializing in wearable devices, is dedicated to the development of wearable computing devices. In December 2013, Horizons Ventures led its Series B financing round of $15.2 million.
The company was co-founded by Sonny Vu, Sridhar Iyengar, and John Sculley in October 2011. Headquartered in San Francisco, USA, it specializes in the design and manufacture of sensor-based wearable devices.
The company’s Shine and Flash product lines function as combined fitness and sleep trackers. They monitor users’ physical activity and exercise intensity, providing data in metric units—including step count, calories burned, activity distance, and duration of light and deep sleep—which is then synced to users’ iOS or Android devices.
Modern Meadow, a 3D bioprinting startup based in New York, USA, cultivates beef and cowhide in laboratory vessels using biofabrication engineering and 3D printing technologies. Modern Meadow believes that bioprinted meat can not only meet human demand for animal protein but also be more environmentally friendly. The company first received funding from Li Ka-shing’s foundation in 2014, and in June 2016, it secured $40 million in Series B financing led by Horizons Ventures.
Kaiima is a genetics and breeding technology company headquartered in Israel. Founded in 2006, the company has developed an innovative, non-GMO technology platform called EP, which enhances yields of food and energy crops while improving resource-use efficiency. In 2013, Kaiima secured tens of millions of dollars in financing from Horizons Ventures.
Kaiima has established collaborations with numerous seed companies and R&D institutions worldwide, and its novel breeding solutions are well aligned with the needs of sustainable agricultural development.
Kaiima’s business has also expanded into the field of castor bean breeding and propagation, enabling its subsidiaries to develop high-quality vegetables and crops through its marketing platform, CastorMaxx.
MeMed Diagnostics, founded in 2009 and headquartered in Israel, is a high-tech company specializing in in vitro diagnostic instruments. Its core product, Immuno Xpert, is an in vitro rapid system for differentiating infectious pathogens.
With just a single drop of blood, the device can rapidly detect pathogens such as Mycoplasma, Chlamydia, viruses, and bacteria. The company aims to develop rapid and effective in vitro diagnostic products to help physicians prescribe targeted treatments, optimize antibiotic selection, and protect patients from antibiotic misuse. It is currently developing the next-generation ImmunoXpert platform.
Medial EarlySign, founded in 2009 and headquartered in Israel, leverages advanced big data and machine learning technologies to analyze and process medical data. Furthermore, Medial EarlySign has developed a proprietary algorithmic platform tailored for healthcare big data, capable of processing billions of medical records to assist in the early identification and diagnosis of high-risk or high-burden diseases. In May 2018, Horizons Ventures participated in the company’s $30 million Series B financing round.
Perfect Day was founded in 2014 by Ryan and Perumal. Perfect Day’s milk production technology is similar to beer brewing. By leveraging yeast and ancient fermentation techniques, they ultimately produce milk that delivers the taste and texture of traditional dairy but requires no cows. This milk is also free from cholesterol, hormones, and antibiotics. In 2016, Horizons Ventures participated in the company’s $4 million funding round.
ProHealthspan was co-founded by American biochemist Charlie Brenner and his friend, and was later acquired by ChromaDex, a publicly listed U.S. pharmaceutical company. In April 2017, it received investment from Li Ka-shing.
The company’s flagship product is TRU NIAGEN, an anti-aging supplement whose active ingredient is nicotinamide riboside (NR), a member of the vitamin B3 family. NR was discovered in 2004 by Charlie Brenner, a professor at Dartmouth College in the United States. Derived from vitamin B3, NR has demonstrated remarkable anti-aging efficacy.
Evolve BioSystems, founded in 2011 and headquartered in California, USA, is affiliated with the Foods for Health Institute (FFHI) at the University of California, Davis. The company aims to develop a series of products to address gut microbiota dysbiosis in infants, with applications extending to diseases caused by gut microbiota imbalances across the entire lifespan. The team possesses over a decade of research experience in infant gut microbiomes. In 2015, the company secured $9 million in Series A financing from Horizons Ventures.