Women-led Black Opal closes on nearly $40m

Tara Bishop, who was named to Venture Capital Journal’s second annual list of Women of Influence in Private Markets, has closed on nearly $40 million with partner Eileen Tanghal for their new healthcare-focused firm, Black Opal Ventures.

The duo’s New York-based firm, which began fundraising in February 2022, has raised $39.4 million from 19 investors, according to a new regulatory filing. Black Opal Ventures Fund I is targeting $120 million.

Bishop declined to comment on the fundraising. She was previously chief medical officer at health insurance start-up Bind, where she is understood to have helped grow revenue by more than 10 times in three years. Prior to that, she was medical director and a senior expert for McKinsey & Co and served as a primary care doctor and associate professor of medicine and healthcare policy at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Tanghal was previously a managing director for In-Q-Tel, the venture firm arm of the Central Intelligence Agency. Tanghal wrote on LinkedIn that she and Bishop launched Black Opal “as a mechanism for investing our own personal capital in 2019. Black Opal Ventures is now a standalone venture capital fund investing in companies using technology and promoting DEI to improve health outcomes for all.”

Black Opal takes its name from the gemstone, which the firm describes as “one of the most precious gems found in nature [whose] rare value is everlasting.”