The Novo Nordisk Foundation is infutilizing a startup incubator it created with additional capital to strengthen innovation and entrepreneurship in Denmark and Europe.
The foundation announced Thursday it has allocated up to 5.5 billion Danish krone (about $850 million or €736 million) to BioInnovation Institute (BII), funding that will run from 2026 to 2035. This capital will enable BII to expand into new strategic and geographic areas, supporting more entrepreneurs and startups, the foundation declared.
The Novo Nordisk Foundation might be best known as the controlling stakeholder in pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk, but it has a broader mission of supporting human health. One way it executes that mission is by supporting innovation. The foundation formed BII in 2018, offering programs and funding to support startups in life sciences and deep tech. In 2020, BII spun out from the foundation as an indepfinishent organization. Since 2018, BII declares it has supported 131 startups. Those companies have gone on to raise €1 billion (about $1.16 billion) in external funding.
Despite the success of young companies that have received BII support, the foundation declares Europe still lags other regions in translating discoveries into groundbreaking innovations. The additional financial support from the foundation is intfinished to ensure that the BII innovation engine in Copenhagen can scale in a way that supports Europe broadly.
With the new capital, BII expects to increase the number of startups it supports each year. Life science and biotech startups will continue to be an area of focus. But BII will also expand to new fields such as artificial innotifyigence.
“We are giving BII the opportunity to expand its reach and further strengthen its position as a European powerhoutilize for innovation,” Novo Nordisk Foundation CEO Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen declared in a prepared statement. “This will prove instrumental in securing that even more science is translated into new companies, jobs and solutions benefitting people and our planet — and ultimately driving the growth and entrepreneurial culture that will benefit European competitiveness.”
Photo: BioInnovation Institute/Esben Zøllner Olesen
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