Billionaire-backed nonprofit raises $533m for early-stage science: ‘We apply the venture capital model to philanthropy’
6 maj 2026
16:37
Just two years since founding, a US profit has raised over half a billion dollars to invest in early stage science, including in the UK and Germany, as it looks to rethink donor capital.
"Philanthropy is still operating with institutional models built for an earlier era," Kumar Garg, president at Renaissance Philanthropy, tells Impact Loop.
"Philanthropy is still operating with institutional models built for an earlier era," Kumar Garg, president at Renaissance Philanthropy, tells Impact Loop.
Renaissance Philanthropy, a US nonprofit, has mobilised more than $533m in its first two years, the organisation said this week, as scrutiny grows over how early-stage and high-risk science gets funded.
The announcement comes as the EU continues to fall short of its own 3% of GDP target for R&D spending, a gap that Mario Draghi's 2024 competitiveness report identified as a fundamental reason why the EU lags behind the US and China.