OurCrowd Invites Investors To Join $100M Pandemic Fund

As the number of worldwide deaths from the coronavirus nears 400,000, the crowdfunding platform OurCrowd has launched a $100 million Pandemic Innovation Fund.

In a blog post on Tuesday (June 2), CEO Jonathan Medved said the fund will provide cash to companies working to develop treatments, vaccinations and cures for COVID-19 and future pandemics, as well as those providing solutions for the fundamental changes in the economy and society caused by the crisis.

“This worldwide crisis presents the greatest challenge yet faced by digital technology,” he wrote. “To ensure that we get the world back on track, there is now an urgent need for innovation to help us overcome many of the problems resulting from the crisis. It’s time for tech to move fast and fix things.”

Medved said the rapid spread of the coronavirus has validated the investment platform’s vision of a connected digital world prepared to solve any crisis through global communication and rapid response.

Medved, who oversees OurCrowd offices in Jerusalem, the U.S., Canada, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong for investors and institutions to back startups and venture funds, said the struggle against an invisible threat will result in the creation of new areas of business activity.

“Some that exist already will expand dramatically … and entirely new industries will appear,” he predicted.

Entrepreneurs, Medved said, are uniquely skilled to provide fast, effective, efficient solutions to some of the world’s greatest challenges. “The tech world has the ingenuity, resources, imagination and drive to tackle these new challenges,” he wrote. “Our new fund will create the bridge between the innovations needed to face these challenges, and the far-sighted investors able to provide the resources entrepreneurs need to change our world for the better.”

Since its founding in 2013, OurCrowd has raised $1.4 billion of committed funding that fueled investments in 200 portfolio companies and 20 venture funds, and nearly 50,000 individual accredited and institutional investors, family offices and venture capital partners from more than 183 countries.

As a result, Medved said that OurCrowd is uniquely positioned to respond quickly and effectively to the technological challenges created by the global coronavirus pandemic.

OurCrowd’s fund is open to accredited private investors for a minimum of $50,000 and to institutional investors for at least $1 million.