Before there is a biotech company, there is an experiment. Someone has an idea about what a cell might do, or how an immune response might be redirected. The experiment needs money. The company that could attract that money does not yet exist. Yosemite has made this awkward interval part of its business.
- Yosemite pairs oncology venture investing with philanthropic research grants.
- Its academic funding can precede a company: Azalea is a documented example.
- The portfolio includes care delivery as well as experimental medicines.
The firm’s stated destination is to make cancer non-lethal within our lifetime. That wording matters. It makes room for earlier detection, better treatment and better care, rather than asking every investment to deliver one universal cure. The interesting question is how to finance the steps along the way.
The experiment before the company
Reed Jobs created Emerson Collective’s health team in late 2015. In 2023, he led its transition into Yosemite. The team brought experience supporting researchers and investing in therapeutic and diagnostic businesses across the United States and Europe. The independent firm arrived with a history of scientific relationships, rather than starting with a blank address book.
Its proposition gives different money different work. Equity backs a business expected to generate a return. Philanthropic grants let researchers investigate a question before it can carry that expectation. Yosemite can participate in both stages. A scientist does not have to pretend an unresolved experiment is already a company.
A grant with a job to do
In March 2024, Yosemite and the American Cancer Society announced a research program with an initial $13.2 million commitment. That September, they announced more than $6 million in inaugural awards. Twenty projects ranged from immune-cell research to an open-source platform for matching patients with clinical trials.
“Philanthropic grantmaking is part of our soul as a venture fund.”
Anna Darbyshire · Yosemite COO · March 2024
The project list has some welcome surprises. One Washington University team proposed engineering yeast as an oral delivery vehicle for cancer therapies. A Yale project addressed breast cancer overtreatment among older women. These are different kinds of progress: finding another way to deliver treatment, or deciding when more treatment may not help.
Look at the 2025 application rules and the idea becomes less abstract. Preliminary data were not required. Projects could last one or two years, with up to $300,000 in direct costs and a maximum total budget of $330,000. Eligibility was tied to faculty or equivalent appointments at invited institutions. These were bounded research awards with specific criteria.
The invitation list included Rockefeller, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Oxford, Cambridge and several American universities. Research priorities included targeted toxins and cancer vaccines. The practical appeal is clear: pay for a question small enough to answer, but consequential enough to change what happens next. The grant does not need a product launch to justify asking it.
The body becomes the workshop
Azalea Therapeutics shows what a connection between those stages can look like. Its academic roots include Jennifer Doudna’s laboratory at Berkeley and Justin Eyquem’s laboratory at UCSF. Early work received philanthropic support from the Yosemite team and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. Yosemite later joined the company’s financing.
Azalea launched publicly in November 2025 with $82 million in combined seed and Series A funding, led by Third Rock Ventures. That figure belongs to the investor group. It is not the size of Yosemite’s individual check. The distinction matters because large financing announcements can make every participating investor look like the sole patron.
The company aims to engineer therapeutic cells directly inside the body. Its delivery system is designed to find particular cells and bring genome-editing cargo to them. The intended advantage is avoiding the individualized manufacturing involved in taking cells out, modifying them and returning them to a patient.
In May 2026, Azalea announced results from six non-human primates given its experimental platform. Those animal results supplied another development milestone. They did not establish clinical benefit in people. For Yosemite, the example makes the financing sequence visible while leaving the scientific test where it belongs: ahead of any claim that a therapy works for patients.
The hours outside the clinic
A different Yosemite investment begins with a less glamorous problem. Cancer care continues after an appointment ends. Symptoms, anxiety and questions about navigating treatment do not observe clinic hours. In April 2025, Yosemite and Maverick Ventures co-led Daymark Health’s $11.5 million seed round, with participation from Oncology Ventures.
Daymark works with health plans to provide supportive care in patients’ homes and virtually, alongside their own oncologists. Its team includes nurses, nurse practitioners and social workers. At launch, it said its first payer partnership would serve more than 2,500 patients. Here, the business opportunity involves organizing care around people already receiving treatment.
Daymark’s total seed round.
Care delivery belongs in the oncology investment conversation, too.
Pay for the next answer
Yosemite’s direct commercial relationships are with investors and companies. Patients benefit indirectly if the research and businesses succeed. Public regulatory records describe asset-based and performance-based compensation. The philanthropic activity sits alongside a venture business that must still make investment decisions and support companies through development.
In January 2026, Forbes reported more than $200 million raised toward a $350 million second-fund target. A target is not a completed fund, and a fund is not revenue. The competitive field includes oncology investor Nextech and company builders such as Third Rock, which also invested alongside Yosemite in Azalea. Collaborator and alternative can be the same firm.
For an entrepreneur approaching Yosemite, a useful starting point is to explain which stage needs support: an unresolved research question, a platform with evidence, or a business delivering care. That is an editorial takeaway from its public activity. A proposal becomes easier to assess when it identifies the next decision, the evidence required and the cost of obtaining it.
The useful lesson for other builders is a sequence: name the uncertainty, design the experiment, then choose financing suited to the answer. This approach depends on patient capital, capable researchers and a credible path from evidence to development. A grant cannot supply clinical proof or a paying customer. Yosemite’s wager is that more good companies can emerge if promising questions get a fair test first.