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 start-up company, startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth poten ...

firm based in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

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 university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

and the

Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research national laboratory operated by UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facility is located in Lemont, Illinois, outside of Chicago, and is the lar ...

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 port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...

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 Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 ...

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

Funds

Notable investments

* Agios Pharmaceuticals *

Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is an American biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of RNA interference (RNAi) therapeutics for genetically defined diseases. The company was founded in 2002 and is he ...

Beam Therapeutics Beam Therapeutics Inc. is an American biotechnology company conducting research in the field of gene therapies and genome editing. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the development of therapies, the company relies o ...

* Bluebird Bio *

BirthdayExpress.com BirthdayExpress.com is an American online retailer based in New Berlin, Wisconsin, that sells party supplies and decorations specifically for, but not limited to, children's birthdays. BirthdayExpress.com also powers the party store on the soci ...

deCODE genetics deCODE genetics ( is, Íslensk erfðagreining) is a biopharmaceutical company based in Reykjavík, Iceland. The company was founded in 1996 by Kári Stefánsson with the aim of using population genetics studies to identify variations in the huma ...

GRAIL The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) was an American lunar science mission in NASA's Discovery Program which used high-quality gravitational field mapping of the Moon to determine its interior structure. The two small spacecra ...

* 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 Inst ...

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 Enhanc ...

* Nebula Genomics *

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 * Sapphire Energy * Twist Bioscience * Unity Biotechnology * VBI Vaccines

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