Ascension Ventures

Ryan Schuler is senior managing director and firm lead, alongside senior managing director John Kuelper. The investment bench runs to three managing directors: Sean Cheng, who holds a PhD, plus Pooja Goel and Taha Jangda. Kate Davis is investment principal, Guneesh Batra is investment manager, and Spencer Root and Brendan Salvino are senior investment associates. Operations sit with chief administrative officer Jamie Wehrung and finance director Emily Kuhns.

Eleven named professionals is small relative to the capital under management, and that follows from the model rather than from thin staffing. Sourcing, diligence and commercial validation lean on the clinical and operating staff of the 13 limited-partner health systems, so the investment team functions as much as a connector into those systems as a conventional venture bench. The firm publishes no prior-employer detail for its team on its site.

Ascension Ventures does not publish a numbered fund series, and an EDGAR company search under the Ascension Ventures name returns no Regulation D offerings, consistent with a vehicle capitalized by health-system limited partners rather than broadly marketed. The firm states it manages more than $1 billion in capital and describes itself as the largest multi-system limited partner platform in healthcare.

Its limited partners are 13 health systems, including Ascension, AdventHealth, Carle Health, Cleveland Clinic, Mercy, Novant Health, OhioHealth, OSF HealthCare, Sentara, EvergreenHealth and the Ohio Hospital Association. Together those systems span roughly 300 acute-care hospitals and facilities across 22 states, about $102 billion in combined annual operating revenue and 453,000 associates, which is the commercial validation asset the firm sells to management teams. Checks run $10 million to $20 million into early- to late-stage healthcare companies judged three to five years from a potential exit, concentrated in healthcare information technology and services and in medical devices and diagnostics. Recent activity includes Censys in cybersecurity and Strive Health in kidney care.