The HatteBus, as Hatteras Venture Partners called it, was the firm’s suite early in the week. The firm held some 40 meetings from Sunday night through Wednesday morning, driving around San Francisco, said General Partner Clay Thorp.

The experience was “incredible,” he said, adding he was fed up with the harrowing cost of hotel suites. “Every year the price kept getting jacked up.”

The J.P. Morgan conference was held at the landmark Westin St. Francis on Union Square. But the event is so big—drawing more than 8,000 registered attendees, according to the bank—that much of the action takes place elsewhere, with investors renting suites in other hotels for meetings.

With prices around $4,500 a night for suites near the conference, the Durham, N.C.-based firm rented a luxury van, emblazoning the outside with stickers and magnets with its name.

Inside the van, the ambience was more subdued. There was a table with a box of Starbucks coffee and rows of leather seats. It was quiet, and the light was low.

The van picked me at the Palace Hotel and I spoke to Thorp, Principal Kseniya Simpson, Partner Lauren Flickinger and Partner Ben Scruggs as they kindly drove me to my next meeting.

The mobile gatherings were productive, said Thorp, with some people welcoming the change of venue.

The van had no bathroom, he noted, but strategic stops at hotels sufficed.

And now on to the news...

Hope for biotech venture capital. A run of pharmaceutical mergers and acquisitions is fueling optimism that biotechnology venture capital is poised to rebound from its postpandemic slump.

• With $223 billion in biotech M&A deals worldwide, 2025 was the industry’s third-busiest year on record, according to investment bank Stifel.
   
• Recent acquisitions illustrate drugmakers’ aggressive pursuit of deals that could help them compete in hot markets, like obesity, and refuel with startups’ new products as their own top-selling medicines come off patent.
   
• In November, Pfizer won a bidding war with rival Novo Nordisk to buy obesity-focused Metsera—one of the few venture-backed biotechs to go public in 2025—in a deal that could be worth more than $10 billion.

Morrison & Co. plans to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a new business aimed at centralizing the dispensing of medical prescriptions across the U.S., as the infrastructure investor sees an opportunity to reduce burdens on pharmacy staff and finances. Fillex will provide prescription-related services to retail pharmacies, grocery chains, online medicine suppliers and health systems. The company will be led by Chief Executive Dain Rusk, an industry veteran who has helped run pharmacy operations at grocery chains Publix and Albertsons.

New Mountain Capital has collected $1.2 billion for its latest fund focused on making minority growth investments in noncyclical businesses such as healthcare technologies, life sciences and financial services. With New Mountain Strategic Equity Fund II, the New York firm collected nearly double the amount that it raised for a predecessor vehicle, which New Mountain wrapped up in 2020 with about $640 million.

OpenAI has struck a multibillion-dollar agreement to buy computing capacity from startup Cerebras Systems, which is backed by Chief Executive Sam Altman, the latest in a string of chip and cloud deals signed by the ChatGPT-maker. OpenAI plans to use chips designed by Cerebras to power its popular chatbot, the companies said Wednesday. It has committed to purchase up to 750 megawatts of computing power over three years from Cerebras. The deal is worth more than $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

People

ClinNEXUS, a care coordination startup serving underserved communities across California, appointed Jovan Hollins as chief operating officer. He was previously COO at Sevita.

Magnet Biomedicine appointed Nick Vlahakis as chief medical officer. He previously held the same position at CohBar.

Mirador Therapeutics, a San Diego-based precision medicine startup developing therapies for immune-mediated inflammatory and fibrotic diseases, closed a $250 million Series B round from investors including ARCH Venture Partners, OrbiMed, TCG Crossover, Venrock and several others.

Proxima, a New York-based startup focusing on AI-driven drug discovery for proximity therapeutics, scored $80 million in seed funding. DCVC led the round, which included participation from NVentures, AIX Ventures, Magnetic Ventures and others. Jason Pontin, general partner at DCVC, will join the company’s board.

Vibrant Therapeutics, a biotechnology startup whose lead program seeks to treat solid tumors, added $61 million in combined Series A+ and Series B funding from investors including Pfizer Ventures, Apricot Capital, HSG and Northern Light Venture Capital. The company also named Han Lee as co-chief executive officer. Pfizer Ventures’ Michael Diem, HSG’s Trency Gu and Apricot Capital’s Zhen Zhang will join Vibrant’s board. The company is headquartered in China and Cambridge, Mass.

VieCure, a Greenwood Village, Colo.-based provider of intelligent software platforms for oncology care, secured a $43 million funding round from investors including Northpond Ventures.

Juvena Therapeutics, a Redwood City, Calif.-based startup whose AI-enabled regenerative biologics are designed to restore tissue function, raised $33.5 million in Series B funding. Bison Ventures led the round, which included participation from Jefferson Life Sciences and others. Ben Hemani of Bison Ventures and Laura Lande-Diner of Jefferson Life Sciences will join Juvena’s board.

Ventaris Surgical, a San Carlos, Calif.-headquartered startup developing a kidney stone treatment system, completed a $30 million Series A round. Longitude Capital led the investment, with Varun Gupta joining the board.

Converge Bio, an AI platform for accelerated drug discovery and development based in Tel Aviv and Boston, nabbed $25 million in Series A funding. Bessemer Venture Partners led the investment, which saw contributions from TLV Partners and others.

Nuclera, a U.K.-headquartered provider of a protein and antibody engineering platform, added $12 million in Series C funding from investors including Elevage Medical Technologies, bringing the round total to $87 million.

RISA Labs, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based provider of an AI operating system for oncology, closed an $11.1 million Series A round co-led by Cencora Ventures and Optum Ventures.

Allos AI, a Berkeley, Calif.-based startup using causal AI to speed development of specialty generic drugs and reformulations of complex medications, was seeded with a $5 million investment led by Oxford Science Enterprises.

• Why Healthcare’s Stock-Market Winners and Losers Could Soon Trade Places

• UnitedHealth Used Aggressive Tactics to Boost Medicare Payments, Senate Report Finds

• How the MAHA Era Is Changing Grocery Aisles

• The Flu Is Surging. How Antivirals Can Help.

   

• Secretive Project Prometheus takes VC Bob Nelsen beyond just health care (STAT)
   
• Neuroscientists Decipher Procrastination: A Brain Mechanism Explains Why People Leave Certain Tasks for Later (Wired)

This newsletter was compiled by Brian Gormley, Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The Team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, and Brian Gormley.

Join us on LinkedIn.