
Avenue Venture Opportunities
11 West 42nd Street, 9th Floor, New York, NY, 10036, United States
Overview
Avenue Capital Group was founded in 1995 by Marc Lasry and Sonia E. Gardner. Pioneers in the distressed debt market, Mr. Lasry and Ms. Gardner have successfully invested in the public and private debt and equity securities of distressed companies across a variety of industries for over two decades. Headquartered in New York, with offices in London, Luxembourg, Munich, and nine offices throughout Asia, the firm manages assets valued at approximately $15.8 billion as of March 31, 2009. Avenue draws on the skills and experience of approximately 300 employees and its Senior Principals, Marc Lasry and Sonia E. Gardner, who have spent virtually their entire careers in the field of distressed investments.
- Total investments
- 13
- Lead investments
- 8
- Investments · 12mo
- 3
- Active investors
- 7
Sector focus
- Finance
- Financial Services
Investment portfolio
- Quartzy
Led · Equity · Apr 2026
Quartzy operates a vertically integrated procurement platform for life sciences organizations that combines inventory management, request workflows, approvals, purchasing, and integrations with research tools. The platform is supported by Quartzy's own warehouse infrastructure and private-label products, and its Quartzy Shop offers access to over 10 million products from more than 1,000 suppliers. Quartzy is used by over 3,000 organizations ranging from seed-stage startups to public companies. The company plans to use new financing to invest in its software, supplier network, customer experience, and go-to-market capabilities to improve fulfillment speed, software functionality, and pricing. Quartzy is headquartered in Hayward, Calif. The company emphasizes reliability and accountability in lab procurement by owning both the software and fulfillment layers of its offering.
- Turn Therapeutics
Led · Debt Financing · Mar 2026
Turn Therapeutics is a clinical-stage dermatology biotech company whose lead candidate, GX-03, is being evaluated for moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis and for onychomycosis. GX-03 has generated encouraging investigator-sponsored human data in onychomycosis. The company is conducting a Phase 2 trial in moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis and expects a mid-year readout from that study. Turn plans to advance its atopic dermatitis and nail fungus programs in parallel and to prepare for potential registrational trials. The recently secured up-to-$25 million growth capital loan facility from Avenue Capital Group is intended to extend the company's runway through key clinical milestones and, if fully utilized, support operations through the end of 2027. No revenue or other operating metrics were disclosed in the articles.
- Nitra
Participated · Debt Financing · Mar 2026
Nitra embeds AI agents into core business functions—payments, procurement, inventory management, scheduling, and insurance verification—giving medical practices a single system to run their back office. Its financial suite includes a Visa-powered expense card, bill pay, patient payment processing, and AI-driven accounting, while its commerce marketplace connects users to thousands of biopharma and medical-supply products through partners like McKesson and Medline. Recently the company added a voice-AI patient management module that handles appointment scheduling and insurance eligibility checks. In 2025 the platform’s annualized revenue jumped from $4 million to more than $33 million on 740 percent growth, and it surpassed $1 billion in annualized processing volume across thousands of doctors in over 700 clinics. December 2025 saw a single-day record of roughly $9 million in purchases. Management expects to serve 3,000+ clinics, top $150 million in annualized revenue, and exceed $4 billion in processing volume during 2026. Founded in 2024 by CEO Tim Hwang and President Jonathan Chen, Nitra plans to expand headcount from about 50 to over 200 and roll out new AI modules for revenue-cycle management, patient marketing, payroll, and staffing.
- Proscia
Participated · Equity · Mar 2025
Proscia provides an enterprise pathology platform, Concentriq, plus a precision medicine AI portfolio and real-world data to accelerate development and use of therapies and diagnostics. The company’s products are used daily by pharmaceutical companies and a global network of diagnostic laboratories. Proscia holds FDA 510(k) clearance and CE‑IVDR certification for its diagnostic software. Led by CEO David West, the company focuses on enabling AI to advance precision medicine and tackle diseases such as cancer. Proscia recently raised $50M, bringing its total funding to $130M, and intends to use the proceeds to grow its customer footprint and advance Concentriq’s AI capabilities. Proscia develops a digital pathology software platform and AI applications that automate tasks such as quality control and tumor identification. Its open platform enables partners, customers, and developers to build and deploy disease-specific AI tools, and the company works with cloud providers like AWS and Azure to scale enterprise deployments. The platform is used by 14 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies to leverage pathology image data for drug discovery and development. Proscia recently received FDA clearance for its software, which allows it to expand into the U.S. diagnostic market. The company raised a $9 million extension to its Series C, bringing the round to $46 million, and plans to use the funds to accelerate commercial growth and further develop its AI-powered applications. Proscia positions itself to address a global pathologist shortage and rising cancer rates as digital pathology adoption accelerates toward widespread use in the next 5–7 years. Proscia provides the Concentriq® platform, which combines enterprise scalability with a broad portfolio of AI applications for digital and computational pathology. Led by CEO David West and based in Philadelphia, the company serves customers including 10 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies and the Joint Pathology Center, which selected Concentriq to digitize a tissue repository of over 55 million slides. Proscia raised $37M in a Series C to accelerate adoption of computational pathology and strengthen its market and product leadership. The company plans to use the funds to scale commercial operations and expand its sales, marketing, and support teams. Proscia also intends to grow distribution partnerships following a recent OEM agreement with Siemens Healthineers. These investments are aimed at expanding its AI-driven pathology offerings and commercial footprint. Proscia offers the Concentriq digital pathology platform combined with AI-powered applications to digitize high-resolution tissue biopsy images and unlock new insights for laboratories, health systems, and life sciences companies. The company plans to expand its AI application portfolio (building on its DermAI application), grow its data assets, and accelerate commercial expansion by ramping up global sales, marketing, and support teams. Proscia will also advance its regulatory strategy to pursue FDA clearance, building on its existing CE Mark and MDSAP certification. Since closing a Series A in 2018, Proscia has amassed customers including Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the Joint Pathology Center, and 10 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies. JPC selected Concentriq to digitize the world’s largest human tissue repository of over 55 million slides. The company positions its software and AI to transform pathology’s historically analog workflows into data-driven diagnostics to improve patient outcomes and accelerate biomedical research. Proscia offers a cloud-based, modular digital pathology platform used by thousands of pathologists, scientists, histotechnicians, and lab managers at more than 300 clinical and research facilities worldwide. The platform integrates with labs' existing environments and technology ecosystems to enable digital adoption, streamline image-based workflows, and open imaging and analytics revenue streams. Proscia is building AI-enabled, disease-specific modules that sit atop its platform to augment pathologists' evaluations and improve diagnostic efficiency and quality. The company plans to commercialize new clinical AI workflows targeting high-volume, high-impact cancers, with its first module, DermAI™, scheduled for release in December 2018. Proscia positions these technologies to increase access to care, reduce turnaround times and costs, and unlock data from tissue to advance cancer research and diagnosis. The company was founded by a team from Johns Hopkins and the University of Pittsburgh to improve clinical outcomes in the fight against cancer.
- Men in Blazers Media Network
Led · Series A · Jan 2025
Founded in 2010, Men in Blazers Media Network grew from a single podcast-turned-television show into a multiplatform soccer media network producing original content across podcasting, digital, television and live events. Its programming covers men's and women's football, domestic leagues and international tournaments and features talent including Sam Mewis, Becky Sauerbrunn, Lynn Williams, Fabrizio Romano, Tyler Adams, Brendan Hunt and Herculez Gomez. The network has established brand and partnership relationships with companies and organizations such as Anheuser-Busch InBev, Danone, the NWSL and AFC Wrexham. With the 2026 Men’s World Cup approaching, the company plans to expand live events and both short-form and long-form programming to scale coverage for U.S. soccer fans. Men in Blazers intends to grow its women's vertical, "The Women's Game," and launch a Hispanic platform, Vamos, to broaden reach and inclusivity. Inner Circle Sports LLC served as financial advisor on the transaction.