Venture Competitions

Venture Competitions

The AIM-HI Accelerator Fund (AIM-HI) is opening the 2025 AIM-HI Women’s Venture Competition and BRACE Award Venture Competition to early-stage oncology companies worldwide seeking pre-seed, seed, and Series A investments! The application deadline is Saturday, March 15, 2025, at 11:55 pm Eastern time.

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AIM-HI Women’s Venture Competition

AIM-HI launched the Women’s Venture Competition in 2020, despite the global pandemic. Since then, the Women’s Venture Competition has been empowering female scientist-entrepreneurs in the oncology arena. Through this annual competition, AIM-HI provides critically needed seed funding, important coaching, and continuous access to our global network to highly promising female scientist-entrepreneurs, thus empowering women in oncology and furthering the development of groundbreaking treatments.

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BRACE Award Venture Competition

AIM-HI launched the BRACE (Briding Research from Academia to Cancer Entrepreneurship) Award in collaboration with our partner, the Asian Fund for Cancer Research Limited (AFCR). This program aims to identify and invest in innovative oncology startups that can make an impact on cancers prevalent in underserved populations.

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Why Should You Apply?

  • Interacting with and receiving valuable feedback from the selection and judging committee members, who are key opinion leaders in the oncology field.

  • Access to free, virtual workshop series provided by our partner, Cooley, on topics such as Corporate Legal Basics, IP Protection for Start-Ups, Legal Pitfalls for Start-Ups to Avoid, & Life Science University Transactions/ Licensing

  • Top winnners will be awarded honorariums, recognized with certificates, and considered for further investment, subject to rigorous due diligence conducted by our Investment Committee.

  • The winners will gain recognition and presentation opportunities within the oncology research community, facilitating networking and collaboration opportunities with global cancer experts and investors.

  • The winners who pass the due diligence process will be eligible to receive investment from AIM-HI and co-investors; the process itself will also help the company assess and refine its IP and strategy, clinical development plan, and position itself well for other investors.

AIM-HI Women’s Venture Competition

The annual AIM-HI Women’s Venture Competition provides critical early-stage funding for women entrepreneurs in oncology. The winning company is eligible to receive up to a $1 million equity investment from AIM-HI and co-investors, subject to due diligence, to fund pre-clinical investigations. Ultimately, this financing helps to bring next-generation therapeutics, diagnostics, and prevention technologies to patients.

Committee Members
2024 Competition
Prior Competitions

In addition to seed-stage financing, AIM-HI provides other essential resources to participating startups, including:

Mentoring

A startup’s success depends on its leadership. We match highly coachable female scientist-entrepreneurs with experienced industry leaders to improve their chance of success.

Visibility

We focus on developing time-efficient, strategic connections by helping women scientist-entrepreneurs build out their teams.

Networking

AIM-HI is part of a global network of innovators, investors, and influencers in the oncology subsector of the life sciences industry. We utilize this network for investment and market expansion purposes for our selected woman scientist-entrepreneurs.

BRACE Award Venture Competition

The BRACE Award aims to provide vital support to early-stage biotechs, enabling them to accelerate their innovative therapeutics, diagnostics and cancer prevention products into the clinic, with the ultimate goal of improving outcomes for patients affected by cancer globally.

The winning company will receive up to US$600,000 in investment funding from AFCR and co-investors, subject to due diligence and negotiation, which will serve as early seed money for proof of concept and proof of value on the path to clinical trials and, eventually, to new effective cancer technologies that could save patients’ lives.

2024 Brace Award Venture Competition
Prior BRACE Award Competitions
About the BRACE Award