The business of baby-making

Venture capitalists made 35 deals worth €475 million (£409 million) in the European fertility sector last year – the most in at least a decade – according to figures compiled for The Observer by financial data company PitchBook. View in browser Emma Haslett • Friday 4 July 2025 Dear friend, Welcome to the Boardroom Sensemaker, The Observer's weekly newsletter for the board chairs, directors and executives in charge of Britain's biggest businesses.         Long stories short UK borrowing costs eased as Keir Starmer backed Rachel Reeves as chancellor. Ryanair cancelled flights for 30,000 passengers due to a French strike. Delivery platform Glovo scrapped plans to offer bonuses for working in the heat.                                           The business of baby-making Venture capitalists made 35 deals worth €475 million (£409 million) in the European fertility sector last year – the most in at least a decade – according to figures compiled for The Observer by financial data company PitchBook.   So what? European investors are determined to find a solution to the thorny problem of declining global fertility rates. Fertility is an industry ripe for both consolidation by private equity and innovation by VCs – but there's evidence that debt-fuelled purchases can also leave patients in the lurch.   By the numbers:   The UK accounted for 11 of those deals equivalent to €208 million, almost four times higher than the value in 2023. Among those were Flo Health, a period and ovulation tracking app, which raised €184 million in July, in a funding round that pushed its value over €1 billion – giving it tech "unicorn" status. Later stage private equity was quieter, with just five deals worth €4.3 million – but that followed a bumper year in 2022, when 15 companies raised almost €4.7 billion. Fertility frontiers. On both sides of the Atlantic, investing in fertility is accompanied by wider interest in women's health, which also spans endometriosis to menopause. Historically women's health has been paid little attention by venture capitalists. Last year, companies dedicated to women's health received just 2.3% of all the venture capital invested in healthcare businesses.   The rapid pace of dealmaking in 2024 has not been maintained so far this year, but at ESHRE, Europe's largest fertility conference held in Paris this week, there were signs Europe's investors are still excited by the sector. Big baby bash. At opulently furnished booths, doctors and embryologists sweltering in 38C heat were showered with free coffees and promotional items (including egg- and sperm-themed hand fans). On Monday night, selected attendees were invited to celebrate the launch of Nexpring, a new medtech company, at a party on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. The company was formed in March this year when Astorg, a private equity company, merged three of its brands. Entrepreneurs attending ESHRE confirmed that investors were sniffing around for deals. "I feel like the last virgin on the dancefloor," confessed the founder of one of Europe's largest fertility services providers, who has so far resisted approaches from potential investors and didn't want to be named. Silicon Valley is in on the act. In January this year Gaia, a British insurance provider that helps patients to fund IVF, raised €14.5 million from, among others, Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures. Across the pond, Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, has invested in Conception, a company aiming to create artificial eggs from other human cells. Such investments can be an advantage for patients. A study published in the journal Fertility and Sterility in 2023 showed that live births tend to be higher at clinics with private equity affiliation. That study focused on the US, however, where private-equity owned clinics are disproportionately in wealthier areas - and it is not clear if the same positive story is true for Europe. But there are downsides. In January this year Apricity, a "virtual" fertility clinic, collapsed with almost no warning, after a funding round fell through at the last minute. This left patients, many halfway through treatment, feeling abandoned; some are still owed thousands of pounds. In September 2022, Apricity had raised €17 million, the fifth-biggest UK deal in the sector over the past decade. But Chantal Cox, an investor in the healthtech team at Octopus Ventures, a venture capital firm that led a $15 million funding round for the IVF automation company Overture Life in 2021, says investors will continue to be attracted to the sector. "The fertility sector exemplifies how investing in women's health can yield both significant social impact and strong financial returns," she said. "It's about creating families and improving health outcomes while building valuable businesses. The market is thriving and I'm optimistic." The Nibs Capital Economy, business and finance Crime might pay A parliamentary report released on Wednesday found the estimated cost of economic crime to the UK is more than £290 billion a year – equivalent to 17.5 per cent of GDP or the entire health and education budgets combined. Tackling that crime, it argues, presents a vast growth opportunity. Findings include: HMRC has not fined a single enabler of offshore tax evasion in five years; more than 170 UK properties worth £2.5 billion have been bought with suspicious wealth via secretive trusts; a quarter of all current Serious Fraud Office cases involve companies from the UK's own Overseas Territories; and Roman Abramovich owes £1 billion to HMRC, including his tax bill and potential penalties. A crack down on tax dodging and incentivising asset recovery are obvious solutions. But progress is slow-going. This week, five overseas territories including the British Virgin Islands and Bermuda missed a deadline to introduce registers of company ownership, setting the stage for a constitutional showdown with the UK. Technology AI, science and new things Talent wars Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman are fighting over their employees. Meta has been offering $100 million signing bonuses to top engineering talent, and successfully poached at least five researchers from OpenAI. An OpenAI internal email leaked to Wired makes for extraordinary reading: "I feel a visceral feeling right now, as if someone has broken into our home and stolen something. Please trust that we haven't been sitting idly by". Welcome to the AI talent wars. Few engineers are earning those sorts of figures but typical pay packages in 2024 were between $3 million and $7 million – a rise of about 50 per cent from 2022. Meta has been particularly active in terms of poaching. Earlier this month, it invested $15 billion into data-labelling start-up Scale AI to "acquihire" its staff. The 100-year life Health, education and government Moving to America? A report that AstraZeneca's CEO is privately considering a US listing has put the cat among the pigeons. Whether Pascal Soriot is genuinely interested in moving Britain's most valuable company abroad or is simply "focusing ministers' minds", as a source at a rival company put it, isn't clear. Sources who spoke to the Times have certainly made Soriot's frustrations known; namely, that the rebate scheme for drug pricing needs reform and regulator Nice's process for approving new medicines is outdated. Soriot has previously hit out at Nice's rejection of Enhertu, a breast cancer drug co-developed by AstraZeneca, as well as the government's decision to withdraw financial support ​​for a flu vaccines plant in Speke, Liverpool. But several of AstraZeneca's concerns are shared by peers in the UK pharmaceutical industry and the battle over drug pricing has forced the government to delay its forthcoming life sciences strategy until a deal is reached. Until it's resolved, questions about whether AstraZeneca is fairly valued will continue to surface. Culture Society, identity and belonging Cracking China Rupert Murdoch's Dow Jones has entered into a deal to relaunch Barron's China in partnership with Chinese publication TMTPost. The announcement, which only appeared in Mandarin, is a sign that Murdoch's dream of getting into the world's largest market dies hard. According to a translation of the release, Barron's China will help "global investors understand the complex Chinese wealth and investment ecosystem, and also ensures that Chinese-speaking investors can get the best and most reliable information in their native language". Over the past two decades, News Corp made several attempts to establish a foothold in the Chinese media market, including stakes in Star TV and South China Morning Post. These interests have since been divested. Thanks for reading. Please tell your friends to sign up and tell us what you think. Emma Haslett Contributing reporter Additional reporting by Barney Macintyre and Patricia Clarke. Graphic by Pete Guest. 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