Breakthrough Properties Closes $430M Fund

November 18, 2025

Transitory market dynamics are creating opportunities for investors targeting Class A life science assets.

Breakthrough Properties has reached the first closing for its Breakthrough Properties Growth Portfolio II fund, which will target Class A life science real estate across the U.S. and Europe.

An aerial view of Torrey View life science campus — Torrey Heights by Breakthrough. *Photo by Jason O’Rear, courtesy of Breakthrough Properties*

The fund’s $430 million first closing amount reflects both direct capital and co-investment commitments and builds on Breakthrough’s $3 billion inaugural life science investment fund, which closed in 2022. That first fund was invested in a portfolio of projects totaling nearly 6 million square feet.

Participants in this closing included institutional and private investors such as global asset managers, investment advisors, pension funds and family offices. Breakthrough plans to invest “across a range of life science asset profiles and markets, targeting a blended value-add return.” Subsequent closings are planned for 2026.

A joint venture of Tishman Speyer and Bellco Capital, Breakthrough reportedly is the only dedicated life science real estate manager that’s active across the U.S., U.K. and continental Europe. Its current life science assets encompass purpose-built developments, value-add conversions and core/core-plus properties across eight major biopharma markets.

Breakthrough’s projects include Torrey Heights in San Diego, One Helix in Amsterdam and One Milestone at the forthcoming Harvard Enterprise Research Campus in Boston. More than 60 percent of the company’s global portfolio is currently leased to such investment-grade companies as Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Bristol Myers Squibb, BD and Roche.

In prepared remarks, Breakthrough CEO Dan Belldegrun said that “transitory market dynamics” have created an opportunity to “acquire high-quality assets at heavily disrupted pricing” and take advantage of the sector’s longer-term tailwinds as generalist investors are withdrawing and new supply is highly constrained.

Growth versus disruption

In February, Breakthrough acquired MUSE, a three-building, 186,000-square-foot life science campus in the Torrey Pines submarket of San Diego, for $159 million. The seller was Diversified Healthcare Trust, and the property’s occupancy was reported to be 49 percent leased. Breakthrough indicated that it planned to reposition the one vacant building into wet lab space.

Just last month, a report from JLL suggested that AI could deeply disrupt the life science real estate sector, by cutting demand for space. One of the factors behind this potential upheaval is substantial growth of AI-native biotech companies. These are currently taking at least 15 percent of all U.S. biotech venture capital deals and use only about two-thirds the space per employee of traditional biopharma companies.