Just three years old, Oak HC/FT closes its second fund with $600 million

At three years old, Oak HC/FT is a young firm. But its investors clearly have faith in the outfit. It closed its debut fund with $500 million in late 2014; yesterday, it closed its second fund with $600 million.

Having ties to a company that investors know well goes a long way in explaining their trust. Oak HC/FT spun out of Oak Investment Partners, a powerhouse that manages more than a dozen funds focused on private equity-type investments in tech and has invested billions of dollars in hundreds of companies since its 1978 founding.

The younger carve-out — which is focus exclusively on financial and healthcare technology companies — also has its share of star power, including Annie Lamont, who joined Oak in 1982 and is the managing partner of Oak HC/FT; her many bets over the years include Castlight Health, a health benefits platform that went public in 2014, and Poynt, a three-year-old, software-enabled point-of-sale device that merchants use to accept credit and debit cards.

The firm, which features seven full-time investors (plus three analysts), also counts among its four venture partners Zeke Emanuel, the famous oncologist and bioethicist.

Oak HC/FT typically looks to invest between $5 million and $50 million in growth-stage companies, and between $15 million and $35 million in earlier-stage venture startups. Some of its largest bets to date include LDI, a full-service pharmacy benefit management company; VillageMD, a management services company that partners with healthcare providers to improve care delivery; and, on the fintech side, Insureon, an online agency that provides insurance protection services for small businesses.

Worth noting: The firm does not define healthcare as encompassing bioengineering startups or medical devices, but rather pharmaceutical services, alternative-care delivery models and sub-population management companies.

Other investments include Aspire Health, a Nashville-based provider of home and outpatient-based palliative care; Feedzai, a San Mateo, Ca.-based startup that uses machine learning to reduce financial fraud; and Trov, a next-generation insurance platform in Danville, Ca., that sells on-demand micro insurance for products.

Last month, the firm saw its first exit, too: Thermo Fisher Scientific’s acquisition of Core Informatics, a cloud-based platform supporting scientific data management. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to Crunchbase, the 11-year-old company had raised $22.5 million from investors, including $17.5 million in Series B funding from Oak HC/FT in 2015.