ARCH Venture Partners (ARCH) is an American

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

firm based in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

Background

In 1986, the ARCH Development Corporation was initially created by the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

and the

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory operated by University of Chicago, UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facil ...

as an

non-profit A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

initiative to commercialize the technology developed by them . The name ARCH reflects this origin with "AR" from Argonne and "CH" from the University of Chicago. ARCH Development Corporation was led by Steven Lazarus who was Deputy Dean of

University of Chicago Booth School of Business The University of Chicago Booth School of Business (Chicago Booth or Booth) is the graduate business school of the University of Chicago. Founded in 1898, Chicago Booth is the second-oldest business school in the U.S. and is associated with 10 N ...

. Lazarus noted that that startup plans were hindered by lack of external capital so a venture fund would be created to provide it. In 1989, the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory provided around $9 million in capital for ARCH Development Corporation's first fund, ARCH Venture Fund Limited Partnership. It was believed to be first venture capital fund to be established between a major U.S. laboratory and university and the first to be fully pledged by a group of investors. The first fund invested in twelve companies with 7-8 of them being successful investments. After the success of the first fund, the university stated it no longer considered ARCH Development Corporation as an experiment and wasn't comfortable continuing as general partner of a venture fund so it proposed that ARCH Development Corporation would focus on licensing and business development of technologies while capital raising will be done outside the university . In 1992, Lazarus along with Booth Graduate students, Clint Bybee, Keith Crandell and Bob Nelsen left the university to set up ARCH Venture Partners as an independent firm to raise capital. The firm mainly invests in companies that are in the biotechnology, semiconductors and computing fields. ARCH Venture Partners is headquartered in Chicago with additional offices in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

and

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

. On June 10, 2018, Lazarus passed away and the firm's management was succeeded by the other co-founders.

Funds

Notable investments

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* BirthdayExpress.com *

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* Illumina *

Impinj Impinj, Inc. is a manufacturer of radio-frequency identification (RFID) devices and software. The company was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. The company was started based on the research done at the California Insti ...

Nanosys Nanosys is a nanotechnology company located in Milpitas, California and founded in 2001. The company develops and manufactures quantum dot materials for display products. Products Quantum Dot Enhancement Film (QDEF) Nanosys Quantum Dot Enhance ...

Nebula Genomics Nebula Genomics is a personal genomics company based in San Francisco, California. It offers a whole-genome sequencing service. History Nebula Genomics was co-founded in 2018 by George Church, geneticist at Harvard Medical School. In August 20 ...

Netbot Netbot was the first commercial Internet price comparison service. Founded by University of Washington Computer Science professors Oren Etzioni and Daniel S. Weld the company was funded by ARCH Venture Partners, Alta Partners and the Madrona ...

Pioneer Square Labs Pioneer Square Labs (PSL) is an American startup studio and Venture capital, venture capital fund, founded in 2015 and is based in Seattle, Washington (state), Washington. PSL develops and tests new business ideas and creates new companies out of ...

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Twist Bioscience Twist Bioscience is a public biotechnology company based in South San Francisco that manufactures synthetic DNA and DNA products for customers in a wide range of industries. Twist was founded in 2013 by Emily Leproust, Bill Banyai, and Bill Pe ...

Unity Biotechnology Unity Biotechnology is a publicly traded American biotechnology company that develops drugs that target senescent cells. The company's products in development include UBX 1325, which targets Bcl-xL, a mechanism to eliminate senescent cells in a ...

VBI Vaccines Variation Biotechnologies Inc. (VBI), also known as VBI Vaccines Inc., is a biopharmaceutical company, headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with research facilities in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and a research and manufacturing site in Rehovo ...

References

External links

* {{authority control American companies established in 1986 Financial services companies based in Illinois Financial services companies established in 1986 Venture capital firms of the United States