Breaking through
the impossible
Since 2015, Leaps by Bayer has invested over $1.5 billion in ventures that tackle fundamental breakthroughs and shift core paradigms in our industries.
Health:
from treatment to cure / prevention
Modern medicine has been pivotal in doubling life expectancy over the last 150 years. We believe it is our responsibility to not only pursue biomedical innovations that could disrupt our core business, but to transform the lives of millions of patients for the better.
Agriculture:
from more to better
Agriculture today is optimized for the scale of a growing population. Next-generation technologies need to produce better food, better use of land and resources, better nutrition, better sustainability, better solutions for the diverse needs of people and our planet.
Our impact investment approach aims to conquer ten huge challenges facing humanity. Some people call them impossible. We call them “Leaps”.
For the long term,
we need to think big
The scale of our mission requires significant and sustained investment of both money and time. We collaborate with the world’s brightest minds in biotech and agriculture, focusing on medium-to-large equity investments over a minimum time of three to five years. Leaps by Bayer is able to provide significant early-stage funding, allowing companies to focus on the long-term delivery of their disruptive technology, rather than short-term and lower impact results.
Through our investments, we form targeted collaborations and new ventures, lift their talent towards a greater purpose, and maximize their probability of success. We accelerate the work of leading entrepreneurs with funding and active incubation to enable breakthrough ideas that achieve maturity and scale.
Growing knowledge
through collaboration
Currently industry convention blocks innovation by keeping IP siloed. We believe this can hinder scientific breakthroughs. We challenge this convention by enabling the exchange of proprietary assets. This can include sharing our own patents or providing access to the Bayer network’s technical capabilities and 150 years of expertise. All of the companies we partner with remain autonomous with respect to decision making, we build our relationship from start to finish. Together, we aim to transform the lives of millions of patients and the health of the planet for the better.
We do so by facilitating and supporting them in a process 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.
Return
for humanity
It is vital impact funds measure success beyond financial ROI. At Leaps, we have a key metric of success called “return for humanity”. We predict and measure if our investments improve wellbeing.
How?
Introducing Wellbeing Adjusted Life Years (WALY), a common currency of impact based on evidence and experience.
How much happiness could we create by resolving Parkinson’s disease? Or ensuring crop shortages are less severe? WALYs provides answers.
When a catastrophe occurs, we’d previously look at ‘lives lost’ or the ‘financial cost of repair’ to determine impact. But what if no lives were lost but the event still has a meaningful impact on humanity?
WALYs provides a metric for determining the impact events have on wellbeing. It also predicts how much good for humanity we could generate by addressing disease and solving issues.
10 Leaps.
10 huge challenges.
By leveraging transformative biotechnologies, we aim to tackle ten Leaps that could have the greatest impact on humanity. Much of what we are aiming to achieve is not yet possible. Setbacks and failures are to be expected in dealing with such ambitious targets. Each Leap starts with a very low probability of success. Each one could fundamentally change the world for the better.
However, with 150 years of history and expertise in the life sciences, across both healthcare and agriculture, Bayer sees the bigger picture.
We feel it is our responsibility to set new benchmarks; to find the courage to begin where others resist and to drive breakthrough innovation.
Our Leaps reflect Bayer’s ambition to tackle the biggest challenges based on where our leadership and competencies can most make a difference.
These 10 films bring each of our Leaps to life – imagining what's possible, how we might achieve it and how it could positively transform our lives and our planet.
01 /
Cure
genetic diseases
Stopping genetic diseases before they develop or progress could prevent chronic suffering and give many of us the chance to live a full and healthy life.
02 /
Provide
sustainable organ and tissue replacement
Cell and gene therapies hold tremendous promise to restore health, reverse the course of degenerative diseases and prevent organ failure.
03 /
Reduce
environmental impact of agriculture
From carbon sequestration to reducing land and water usage, innovation has the power to transform modern agriculture.
04 /
Prevent
and cure cancer
Biotechnology that leverages the immune system and other emerging platforms could make huge strides in the fight against cancer.
05 /
Protect
brain and mind
Neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disease along with mental health disorders represent a massive and growing unmet need with no simple solutions available.
06 /
Reverse
autoimmune diseases and chronic inflammation
Systematically addressing autoimmune diseases and chronic inflammation could enable lives free of pain, disease management, and life-threatening conditions.
07 /
Provide
next-generation healthy crops
The Green Revolution lifted millions out of starvation, yet new approaches are needed to provide comprehensive nutrition at a global scale.
08 /
Develop
sustainable protein supply
Nourishing a global population will require new approaches to sustain both a healthy planet and healthy people.
09 /
Prevent
crop and food loss
A pandemic, climate volatility, and an increasingly long and complex supply chain expose the fragility of our global food system and the need for resilience.
10 /
Transform
health with data
From wearable devices to artificial intelligence to protein modeling, digital technology is sparking a revolution in medicine.
