Reed Jobs was 12 when his father, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, was diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer. Eight years later, Steve died at 56, while Reed was an undergraduate at Stanford. In 2023, he launched Yosemite, an oncology-focused investment firm that combines venture capital with philanthropic funding. Yosemite initially launched with more than $200 million. By early 2026, the firm had raised another $200 million-plus for its second fund and said it was managing more than $1 billion in assets.
The experience shaped Reed’s interest in cancer research, leading him to spend summers working in oncology laboratories as a teenager before eventually moving into healthcare investing.
The firm announced its first close of more than $200 million in August 2023. Yosemite was invested in about 20 companies and expected its new fund to support around 25 companies, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. In an interview reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, he said he believes many cancers could eventually move from being fatal diagnoses to manageable, chronic diseases within his lifetime.
Its model combines traditional venture investment with philanthropic grants for academic researchers. The aim is to support scientific work at an early stage and help promising discoveries develop into treatments and companies. Reed has described a long-term goal of changing how cancer is treated. Yosemite’s current investments reflect that strategy. The firm has backed companies working on technologies ranging from gene therapies and cancer vaccines to AI-assisted drug discovery.
Yosemite focuses exclusively on oncology and has invested in areas including gene therapy, immunotherapy, cancer vaccines, radiopharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence-powered drug discovery and earlier cancer detection.