Kimberlin discovers and backs big ideas in science and technology. With this focus, he co-founded or first funded life-supporting ventures that have changed the medical landscape, saved thousands of lives, and revolutionized global communications.
Highlights from his startups:
Celebrating the Internet’s birthday with Leonard Kleinrock, one of its “founding fathers”
Kevin co-founded Ciena Corporation, the world leader in optical networking.
The company started by Gordon Gould, inventor of the Laser, with his protégé and Kimberlin, filed its corporate charter and issued founders’ shares for Ciena on November 12, 1993, just five months after the public release of the World Wide Web.
The firm commercialized the first dense Wave Division Multiplexing (WDM) system — the optical equipment that drove the Internet explosion. This made Ciena the fastest-growing company in its first year of operations in American business history.
Today, WDM is the common basis of the metro, regional, national, intercontinental, and transoceanic communications networks transporting 99% of all Internet traffic. Ciena’s optical solutions, utilized by 85% of major global telecommunications and web-scale companies, form the critical infrastructure enabling data exchanges between almost every AI platform and service on the Internet.
At the start of the mobile revolution, Kimberlin backed Millicom, Inc. As an investor and advisor to the company’s first CEO, he structured the first private financing for Millicom when it had only five employees and $131,000 of paid-in founders’ capital. This financing was the impetus for the joint venture re-named Vodafone in recognition of Millicom’s VOice and DAta phone (predecessor to the smartphone).
Starting on December 16, 1982, with the announcement of their first cellular award in Mr. Kimberlin’s office, Vodafone grew into the world’s largest communications firm. From that point, Millicom led the global rollout of mobile communications by establishing other joint ventures that created dozens of cellular operators throughout Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Asia.
Today, this extended family of Millicom’s provides mobile service to approximately 20% of the human race.
Kevin with the first CEO of Millicom, Orhan Sadik-Khan, at the launch of what became arguably the most influential company in the mobile industry
Kevin was hired by General Instrument Corporation (his corporate partner at Ciena) as the sole General Partner and manager of an engineering team making high-speed Internet equipment.
The Limited Partners were Liberty Media, Forstmann Little, and General Instrument, which collectively invested $525 million in Next Level Communication LP. Their confidence in him was rewarded after Kimberlin took Next Level public, creating a market value of $17 billion. Motorola subsequently acquired 100% of both GI and Next Level.
Kevin Kimberlin with Dr. Minh van Duong at the launch of the AI-platform for Interos.ai
Chaos Physics Pioneer Dr. Minh van Duong and Kevin Kimberlin founded the artificial intelligence platform of Interos.ai—the first real-time, supply chain risk monitoring service.
Interos.ai assembled the world’s largest business relationship database, mapping approximately 350 million global business entities with 18 billion relationships.
As the leader in this exploding market, Interos.ai attained Unicorn status with more than $200 million in venture capital from John Doerr, David Rubenstein, Accenture, Venrock, Knight Dragon, and Kleiner Perkins.
DFMsim Inc., co-founded by Raj Raheja, Anantha Sethuraman, and Kimberlin’s Spencer Trask & Co., built and delivered the first AI-driven solutions for semiconductor manufacturing. The venture simulated many of the processes of designing and producing integrated circuits. Applied Materials, which is driving the Age of Artificial Intelligence by supplying equipment and materials for nearly every chip produced in the world, acquired DFMsim and integrated it into their AIx platform.
Anantha Sethuraman at the 69th IEEE Internet and Electron Device meeting, sharing how Applied Materials is using artificial intelligence and simulation
Co-founders of Myriad Genetics, Nobel Prize laureate, Dr. Walter Gilbert and Kevin Kimberlin
Mr. Kimberlin co-founded Myriad Genetics with the scientists most responsible for creating the technologies that drove the Human Genome Project. They were brought together by Kimberlin’s vision of harnessing the genome to discover gene mutations that give rise to disease.
Myriad received international acclaim for isolating the breast cancer gene, BRCA1, at which point Kimberlin steered the team away from diagnostic products to focus on the reference lab that became the core business of the firm. This service has given predictive insight to more than three million women, most notably Angelina Jolie.
BRCAnalysis was also authorized for use with the first drug approved for BRCA-mutated breast cancer. As the first genome venture, Myriad also created the first FDA-approved lab test for use with a DNA-repair drug, a landmark in genomic medicine.
By understanding the fundamental role that genes play in human health, Myriad is leading the transformation of medicine from treating symptoms to predicting and preventing the very cause of disease.
Osiris Therapeutics, founded by Kimberlin and Dr. Arnold Caplan, patented the Mesenchymal Stem Cell (MSC) and characterizing it in what became the most cited peer-reviewed paper in the history of medicine. This pioneering work culminated in the world’s first regulatory clearance for an allogeneic stem cell product, and a leadership role in regenerative medicine.
Building on this position, the company spearheaded new treatment paradigms for devastating injuries, major burns, immune disorders, and critical illnesses. The impact of MSCs is expanding with 1,700+ trials registered on clinicaltrials.gov to explore their potential to treat an unprecedented 924 different conditions.
Kevin Kimberlin and Dr. Arnold Caplan
Bob Langer and Kevin Kimberlin at a road show event
Kimberlin supported MIT’s Dr. Robert Langer to commercialize his first patent at his inaugural startup, Alkermes (formerly Enzytech), and later his InVivo Therapeutics.
Since then, Dr. Langer has become the third most cited scientist ever and has filed more than 1,400 patents — surpassing even Thomas Edison. Inspired by Dr. Langer’s Moderna, the creator of the lipid-delivered Covid-19 vaccine, Kimberlin started his own lipid-drug company, Vesselon, to enhance pharmaceutical efficacy several-fold.
The success of Millicom gave Kimberlin the credibility to start his first company with renowned polio hero, Dr. Jonas Salk.
As the founder of The Immune Response Corporation, Kimberlin drove the strategy, recruited the management and scientific teams, and brought together its major corporate partners to advance Dr. Salk’s groundbreaking immunotherapeutics.
Immune Response cemented Kimberlin’s reputation as a high-impact entrepreneur when it became the best-performing U.S. stock in 1991.
Their Phase III vaccine trial, incorporating 2,527 HIV-infected patients (the largest immunotherapy trial conducted to that point), unfortunately, failed to meet its clinical endpoint, a devastating personal loss to Kimberlin. Yet he derived comfort by exchanging the company’s B-cell lymphoma patent for stock in a startup backed by Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen. This patent was key to the first FDA-approved immune-based cell therapy – the prostate cancer vaccine that appears to be more effective in African-American men with a 48% reduction in death compared to white men.
The plant and the team that makes the cancer vaccine also made the clinical and initial commercial supply of the first FDA-approved gene therapy (the CAR-T therapy Kymriah from Novartis).
Kevin Kimberlin and Jonas Salk
Health Dialog co-founder, George Bennett with Kevin and Dr. Jack Wennberg, celebrating his Dartmouth endowment
Over a 15-year period, Kimberlin championed the Health Dialog mission of bringing Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) directly to patients, advancing the movement initiated by Dr. Jack Wennberg of Dartmouth College.
Informing patients of their healthcare choices with EBM was the lodestar for Health Dialog, Inc., in which Kimberlin was a pre-A round investor and long-term director. In that role, Kimberlin introduced several of Health Dialog’s key initiatives: its Series A funding; the financial guarantees required by its early customers; and an innovative “one-day IPO” that yielded $170 million for shareholders.
These efforts sustained Health Dialog as it grew into one of the fastest-growing healthcare companies in America. Contributing $130 million in royalties, Health Dialog became the largest financial supporter of Wennberg’s research. This work was the impetus and economic justification for the Affordable Care Act that gave 23 million Americans health insurance for the first time and reduced the number of uninsured by 50%.
In addition to launching new ventures de novo, Mr. Kimberlin also supports big ideas with other bold entrepreneurs. Here are some of his noteworthy discoveries:
Kimberlin was not so fortunate with Nolan Bushnell, the man who launched the video game industry with Atari. Their company was named Irata, which is Atari spelled backward. After Kimberlin backed it, the firm grew rapidly until the auditors caught the CEO looting its treasury, Irata collapsed. At the time, Bushnell said that losing Irata felt worse than missing out on Apple Computer, the company started at Atari by his three employees — Ron Wayne, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs.
Kevin Kimberlin with Nolan Bushnell
On a more positive note, Kimberlin’s focus on Aperture Technologies helped turn that firm into a leading supplier of data center software to Fortune 100 companies. As its major investor and director, he pushed Aperture into the heart of cloud computing — energy and infrastructure management for data centers. Emerson Electric acquired Aperture and its top competitor to form Vertiv.
© 2024 | Kevin Kimberlin
Social Impact
Kevin Kimberlin also supports social progress through charitable activities and gives to a variety of civil organizations.
Kevin gives to a variety of organizations including the Harvard University Innovation Lab, BeyondPolio, and the Jonas Salk Legacy Foundation (to support its efforts for the eradication of polio worldwide), the Audubon Society (for its citizen-science and conservation programs), and Yaddo, the creative artist community, where he is an Honorary Lifetime Member in recognition of his support of writers, choreographers, dancers, playwrights and composers.
Kevin graduated from Indiana University and earned his Masters from Harvard University. He lets his actions speak for themselves, embracing Mr. Spencer Trask’s motto: “Deeds, not words.”