Arch Venture Partners has closed its largest fund to date. The new investment fund gives Arch $1.85 billion to support the creation and advancement of early-stage biotech companies.
As with its earlier funds, Arch will use the money to place a wide range of bets, handing out $50,000 when appropriate but also dialing its investment up to $250 million to support grand plans such as its effort to transform biopharmaceutical manufacturing through Resilience.
In terms of therapeutic areas, Arch expanded on the list of interests it shared when it disclosed its last set of funds in April. The new list features oncology, a long-standing area of focus, as well as neurology, manufacturing, clinical trials and anti-aging medicines.
Arch has invested in many of those areas before, for example by helping Elixir Pharmaceuticals raise $46 million to treat and prevent age-related diseases back in 2006. However, the additions to the list still point to ways in which the events of the past 12 months may be shaping thinking at Arch.
The limitations of pre-pandemic approaches to manufacturing and clinical trials were exposed by the coronavirus, highlighting the potential for new technologies to improve operations during the crisis and beyond. Arch also singled out “challenges such as vaccine distribution, medical professionals being overworked and understaffed and the scarcity of quality mental health services” as areas it will examine.
Traditionally, Arch has disclosed its funds without fanfare through Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings. That changed in April when Arch issued a press release about the $1.46 billion it had raised across two funds. SEC filings reveal Arch had raised most of the money by October 2019, but the near-simultaneous press releases about its funds and Flagship Pioneering’s $1.1 billion fund was a show of confidence in biotech amid the early weeks of the pandemic.
Nine months later, doubts about the ability of biotech to thrive during a pandemic have dissipated, but the change in Arch’s approach to publicizing its funds has persisted. For its 11th fund, Arch put out a press release on the day it disclosed the raising of $1.85 billion to the SEC.
Arch first submitted details of its 11th fund to the SEC in November, at which time it had raised none of the targeted $1.5 billion. The filings suggest Arch raised the money in a little more than two months amid a pandemic and more routine end-of-year disruptions such as Thanksgiving.