Reed Jobs, the son of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, is in the United Kingdom seeking investment opportunities for his oncology-focused venture capital fund, Yosemite, which manages over $1 billion in assets. The 34-year-old’s mission is driven by the loss of his father to a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2011 at age 56, motivating him to make cancer a non-lethal, treatable disease.
Yosemite’s Investment Focus
Based in San Francisco, Yosemite has already invested in approximately 20 healthcare startups, including Tune Therapeutics, Azalea Therapeutics, Chai Discovery, and Sage Care in the US, as well as undisclosed UK companies. The fund concentrates on gene therapy, cancer vaccines, radiopharmaceuticals, and artificial intelligence. “As a firm, we invest in companies internationally, and we would love to look at opportunities in the UK,” Jobs stated on the sidelines of a LifeArc conference in London. Yosemite receives investment from LifeArc, a British not-for-profit focusing on rare diseases, and has partnerships with Oxford and Cambridge universities through philanthropic grants.
Personal Motivation and Fund Structure
Jobs, who interned in oncology at Stanford University at age 15 and later studied pre-medical before switching to history, chose to focus on cancer due to personal experiences, including the death of a close friend from leukemia. Yosemite comprises a for-profit venture investing in healthcare companies and a donor-advised fund awarding grants to early-stage scientists. It was spun off from Emerson Collective, founded by his mother Laurene Powell Jobs, in 2023.
Backed by Amgen, MIT, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and billionaire John Doerr, Yosemite aims to shift cancer from an “end-stage disease” to an early-diagnosed, monitored, and treated illness, similar to advances in HIV and cardiovascular disease. “Today far too many cancers are either diagnosed incidentally or only once metastatic,” Jobs said, emphasizing the need for better detection and personalized therapy.
Immunotherapy and Rare Cancers
Jobs highlighted immunotherapy as a promising area, noting that 20% of cancers are classified as rare. LifeArc’s Lone Friis pointed out that childhood cancers, though rare, remain the leading disease-related cause of death in children, with only eight new pediatric medications in two decades compared to 150 for adults. “We need to do better,” she concluded.
