Helicase Venture

Helicase Venture is an early-stage life sciences venture capital firm founded in 2018 and headquartered in Boston with an additional presence in San Francisco. The firm focuses on innovative life sciences and Bio-IT companies — businesses at the intersection of engineering, health, and AI — with a mission to work alongside early-stage teams as they navigate developmental milestones and bring therapies to patients. The two-partner team is led by Dr. Richard Tsai, a Founding Member who previously served as a Partner at BioEngine Capital where he headed life science investments and was involved in founding multiple companies, and Dr. Joy Lee as Partner. The firm leads rounds and targets Seed and Series A investments with initial commitments of $1 to $5 million. Helicase manages one fund, Helicase Venture Fund I, which has backed eight companies across the United States, Austria, and China, producing two IPOs and three acquisitions. Notable portfolio companies include AbSci (AI-driven drug and target discovery using deep learning and synthetic biology, which completed a Nasdaq IPO in July 2021 at a $1.45 billion market capitalization), Tangible Science (contact lens technology spanning consumer to smart applications), and Totient (AI-driven biotech leveraging tertiary lymphoid structures for novel tissue-specific antigens and high-affinity antibody therapeutics, which was subsequently acquired by AbSci). Helicase makes investment decisions as a team, with each partner contributing domain expertise across biological sciences and computational technologies, supplemented by a network of scientific advisors. The firm's focus on companies working at the frontier of biology and computation reflects a thesis that the most transformative near-term progress in patient care will come from founders who can move fluidly between wet lab science and data-driven discovery.