OrbiMed Israel: The Israeli Office of the World's Largest Healthtech VC

OrbiMed Israel is the Herzliya Pituach office of OrbiMed Advisors LLC — the New York-headquartered global healthcare investment firm founded in 1998 by Samuel Isaly and now managing approximately $18 billion across public equity, private equity, venture, and royalty/credit strategies. OrbiMed Israel Partners is the firm's dedicated Israel-focused venture vehicle, established after OrbiMed opened its Middle East office in 2010. With over 100 professionals across 12 global offices and one of the largest dedicated healthcare investment platforms in the world, OrbiMed operates the most institutionally significant global healthcare venture presence on the ground in Israel.

The OrbiMed platform

OrbiMed Advisors LLC — headquartered at 601 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan — is one of the world's largest dedicated healthcare investment firms. As of March 2024 the firm reported approximately $18 billion in assets under management across 17 private funds and a team of roughly 112 professionals. The platform invests across public equity, private equity, venture capital, and royalty and credit structures, with global reach through 12 offices including New York, San Francisco, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Mumbai, and Herzliya Pituach.

The scope of the platform is what makes OrbiMed's presence in Israel structurally significant. Most global healthcare investors approach Israeli venture as a coverage assignment; OrbiMed operates a full local office with a dedicated Israel-focused fund vehicle, and the firm has been continuously present on the ground in Israel since 2010.

Founding — Mehta & Isaly 1989, OrbiMed 1998

OrbiMed's roots trace to 1989, when former S.G. Warburg pharmaceutical analysts Viren Mehta and Samuel Isaly co-founded Mehta & Isaly, a money-management and research firm dedicated to healthcare. The predecessor entity made its first venture capital investment in 1993. In 1998 the partnership split: Mehta formed Mehta Partners, and Isaly established OrbiMed Advisors as the healthcare-investment platform now trading under the OrbiMed name. Michael Sheffery and Arvind Desai are named co-founders of the modern OrbiMed entity.

The firm expanded internationally through the 2000s. OrbiMed opened offices in Shanghai and Mumbai in 2007. The Herzliya office followed in 2010 — the firm's Middle East hub and the anchor of OrbiMed's Israeli venture presence.

OrbiMed Israel Partners and the Herzliya office

The OrbiMed Israel presence operates from 5 Hahoshlim Street in Herzliya Pituach, the coastal Tel Aviv-adjacent technology corridor that houses much of Israel's institutional venture and healthcare-tech infrastructure. The office runs OrbiMed Israel Partners — a series of Israel-focused venture funds that invest in the healthcare device, biopharmaceutical, life-science, diagnostic, and healthcare-services categories, with investment scope covering both Israeli companies and US healthcare companies where an Israeli-office team-lead is best positioned to source and diligence.

Public reporting shows OrbiMed Israel Partners with roughly 44 investments deployed across its Israeli venture vehicles. The typical OrbiMed check range across the broader platform is $2.25 million to $200 million, spanning early-stage venture, growth, and late-stage participation.

Investment thesis — biopharma, medical devices, diagnostics

The OrbiMed thesis is dedicated healthcare, invested across the capital stack. In practice, the venture programs concentrate on biopharmaceuticals (small-molecule and biologic drug development), medical devices (surgical, diagnostic, and therapeutic hardware), diagnostics (including molecular and imaging diagnostics), and healthcare services (including provider-side technology and clinical services companies). Recent portfolio activity has spanned antibody-drug conjugates (ProfoundBio, acquired by Genmab for $1.8 billion), oncology-directed therapeutics (Chemomab Therapeutics), and genomic-medicine platforms (Averna Therapeutics).

The distinguishing feature of OrbiMed relative to most Israeli-domiciled healthcare investors is the ability to hold positions across the private-to-public transition. Israeli healthtech companies routinely list on NASDAQ; OrbiMed's public-equity platform can follow venture-stage exposures into public-market positions, which shortens the effective time-to-liquidity horizon for the venture team.

The Israeli healthcare IPO exit environment

Israeli healthtech companies have historically preferred NASDAQ listings over Tel Aviv Stock Exchange listings for their exit path. Insightec, Adicet Bio, Omada Health, Seer, and additional Israeli-connected healthcare-technology companies have listed on NASDAQ across the past decade, and the Israeli healthtech IPO pipeline has been one of the more active national IPO categories on the US healthcare-listings market. OrbiMed's dual public-and-private capability is a structural fit for that exit-path pattern: the firm can support portfolio companies through late-stage private rounds and follow them into the public register through the OrbiMed public-equity funds.

The Israeli-connected healthcare-technology IPO layer is one of the areas where the country's venture cluster produces some of its most consistent institutional returns, and OrbiMed's platform is positioned across the full private-to-public transition.

Recent portfolio activity and platform positioning

OrbiMed portfolio activity across 2024 and 2025 has spanned oncology, antibody-drug conjugates, and precision medicine. The Genmab acquisition of ProfoundBio for $1.8 billion — announced in 2024 — closed one of the more significant recent OrbiMed portfolio exits, with ProfoundBio's next-generation antibody-drug conjugate program (including Rina-S for ovarian cancer) providing the strategic anchor for the Genmab deal. Additional named OrbiMed positions include Chemomab Therapeutics (fibro-inflammatory disease therapeutics) and Averna Therapeutics (genomic-medicine platform), alongside continued participation in mid- and late-stage private and PIPE rounds across the healthcare-technology cluster.

Public reporting from Startup Nation Central identifies OrbiMed's Israeli-office activity across biotechnology, medical devices, and digital healthcare, with reported total AUM at the group level approaching $18 billion and total portfolio exposure spanning 41 Israeli portfolio companies. The lead-investor share on Israeli rounds is approximately 8 percent, consistent with a global-specialist platform that prefers to participate in institutionally-led syndicates rather than lead first-money-in seed rounds.

Position in the Israeli healthcare venture cluster

OrbiMed Israel sits at the top of the Israeli healthcare venture layer alongside aMoon Fund — the Marius Nacht-founded, Ra'anana-based healthtech venture platform that raised $660 million for aMoon II — and adjacent institutional healthcare investors. The distinction between the two platforms is structural: aMoon is Israeli-founded and Israeli-anchored; OrbiMed is a global healthcare specialist that operates one of its regional offices in Israel. Both platforms invest into the Israeli healthcare corridor, but from different institutional foundations, and both routinely appear on the same Israeli healthtech company cap tables at growth and pre-IPO rounds.

The broader Israeli healthcare venture cluster runs through Herzliya Pituach (where OrbiMed and adjacent investors are concentrated), Ra'anana (aMoon's headquarters), and Tel Aviv, and connects to the university and hospital research infrastructure at the Weizmann Institute, the Technion, Hebrew University, and the major Israeli academic medical centers including Sheba Medical Center and Hadassah. The Israeli healthcare-technology export market — including biopharma, medical devices, and digital-health platforms — is one of the country's structurally most-supported venture categories, with continued institutional-investor demand for exposure to the Israeli life-sciences layer.

Primary Sources

OrbiMed Advisors LLC — corporate materials (orbimed.com). SEC Form ADV filings for OrbiMed Advisors LLC. Wikipedia entry on OrbiMed Advisors, current as of March 2024 (AUM $18 billion, headcount 112). PitchBook institutional profile — OrbiMed Israel Partners. Startup Nation Central investor profile — OrbiMed. Genmab / ProfoundBio $1.8 billion acquisition announcement (2024).

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aMoon Fund: Marius Nacht's $1B+ Israeli Healthtech Venture Platform (olam.business/amoon-fund). Who Is Marius Nacht? Check Point Co-Founder, aMoon Architect (olam.business/marius-nacht). Israeli VC: Pitango, Aleph, Vintage, Glilot, NFX, Team8 — Who's Leading What (olam.business/israeli-vc-pitango-aleph-vintage-glilot-nfx-team8-whos-leading-what). Who Funds Israel: The Venture Capital Fund Map (olam.business/who-funds-israel-the-venture-capital-fund-map). Pitango: Chemi Peres and Israel's Oldest Institutional VC (olam.business/pitango-venture-capital).