Breaking through impossible
Breaking through impossible
Leaps by the numbers
15+
New investments and follow-on investments 2023
1.9+ Billion USD
Total amount invested in Leaps portfolio 2015 - 2023
60+
# of portfolio companies 2015 - 2023
About
Leaps is the strategic impact investment unit of Bayer. By accelerating transformative biotechnologies, we aim to shift key paradigms in life science, changing the world for better.
In health, we pursue breakthroughs that could set new standards in medical care, moving from treating symptoms to curing or preventing diseases. In agriculture, we drive innovations that could nourish a growing population while restoring the planet.
10 Leaps
Our ten Leaps are at the core of our investment approach. They reflect our ambition to tackle the biggest challenges, with consideration for how Bayer’s 150 years of history and expertise can most make a difference.
Growing knowledge through collaboration
Leaps by Bayer supports early-stage companies and forms new ventures. Significant and sustained investment maximizes their probability of success and enables them to focus on the long-term delivery of their disruptive technology, rather than short-term and lower impact results.
Our portfolio companies remain autonomous with respect to decision making. We support them through what we call “active incubation”. Experienced team members actively engage in the young companies’ development by providing resources and helping them to steer the initial strategic direction.
Impact
How much wellbeing for humanity could we create by e.g., resolving Parkinson’s disease? Or ensuring crop shortages are less severe?
We seek to predict and measure our impact investment approach by developing a new metric of success beyond ROI.
Together with the Happiness Research Institute, we introduced Wellbeing Adjusted Life Years (WALY), a metric determining the impact events have on wellbeing, which also allows to predict how much good for humanity we could generate by addressing disease and solving global issues.
Return for Humanity - Impact Videos
We created two videos that further explain our WALY framework.
Ethical questions need a platform
Biotech breakthroughs raise important ethical questions that can’t be answered by scientists and investors alone. It is our responsibility to engage society in critical discussions.