Summit Therapeutics.
Duggan became the CEO and chairman of Computer Motion, a robotic surgery company, in 1990. Intuitive Surgical acquired it for $67 million in stock in 2003, allowing Duggan to cash out his stake for over $150 million eventually.
Spurred on by his son’s death from brain cancer, Duggan started building a stake in Pharmacyclics, a maker of cancer drugs, in 2004. Pharmaceutical titan AbbVie bought the business for $21 billion in cash and stock in 2015, netting Duggan more than $3 billion, per Bloomberg.
He joined Summit’s board in 2019 and became CEO and chairman in 2020, making cancer drugs his principal focus. He appears to have caught lightning twice in the brutal biotech space, where many companies pour tons of money and years of work into medications that turn out to be duds.
Duggan is also a megadonor to the Church of Scientology, and has backed himself to find and bet on more winning businesses as the head of his own venture capital firm, Duggan Investments.