Steve Jobs’ Son Launches VC Firm To Fund Cancer Cures

Reed Jobs, the son of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, is to launch a venture capital firm to focus on funding cures for different forms of cancer, including the kind that claimed his father’s life.

The 31-year-old Jobs revealed details about the fund an interview with the New York Times. Jobs told the Times his is heavily influenced by his father’s battle with pancreatic cancer.

Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer when his son was 12 and died while Reed was a pre-med student at Stanford. Reed Jobs switched majors and initially went to work at Emerson Collective, a philanthropic and venture-capital organization founded by his mother, Laurene Powell Jobs.

Reed Jobs' new venture, Yosemite, began life as the health division of that organization. It will now spin off into its own entity focused on breakthrough cancer therapies.

“I had never ever wanted to be a venture capitalist,” Jobs told the Times.

“But I realized that when you’re actually incubating something and putting it together, you can make a tremendous difference in what assets are part of that, what direction it’s going to take, and what the scientific focus is going to be.”

In the interview, Jobs said Yosemite will give research grants to scientists and make for-profit investments. The idea is that researchers interested in monetizing their discoveries will turn to Yosemite for investment capital. 

In a press release, Yosemite said they had raised $200 million and will seek investment opportunities with a focus on oncology, and in particular, therapeutics, diagnostics and digital health. 

"We're on a mission to lead the next chapter in the fight against cancer and forming our own standalone entity provides us the flexibility to best propel great ideas until they're at scale," Jobs said in the press release. 

It is thought Yosemite will target gene therapies — an emerging treatment option for a variety of cancers. Prior to Yosemite’s split from Emerson, the fund invested in ElevateBio, which focuses on gene therapy, gene editing and stem cell research, and Tune Therapeutics, which is working towards treating diseases by making targeted alterations to genes.