Arch Venture Partners plans to fund “wild-ass ideas” with new, $400 million venture fund

2014-08-27

Tech venture behemoth Arch Venture Partners has announced its eighth venture fund just closed with more than $400 million in subscriptions and, as co-founder and managing director Robert Nelson just told Forbes, it’s looking to fund companies with “contrarian philosophies.” Alex Konrad over at Forbes writes: That money will go to funding companies that cofounder and managing director Robert Nelson calls “contrarian philosophies,” companies with massive potential but a completely unproven market. “Most of the time we have to create something there because there isn’t anything to invest in, or we don’t like the stuff that is out there,” Nelson says. The investor points to Ikaria, a portfolio company acquired back in December for $1.6 billion. “That was a wild-ass idea of someone to do suspended animation of a living animal. We will do things like that.” Some of ARCH’s investments sound too fanciful to be true, modern-day alchemy like a company that can turn natural gas into gasoline for just a dollar (that’s Siluria, and it’s very real). The oversubscribed round initially aimed for $250 million. Arch plans to use the funding to finance startups in the healthcare, energy and materials sectors around the world. The firm said it has had a number of exits in the past two years – nine IPOs and six M&A events. Notable among its IPOs were oversubscribed biotechs Agios Pharmaceuticals, Bluebird Bio, Kythera Biopharmaceuticals and Receptos. It also showed recent exits in companies like Ikaria, Ahura Scientific, deCODE Genetics, Sage Therapeutics, Fate Therapeutics, BIND Therapeutics, Crystal IS and Achaogen Also notable – the company helped fund Juno Therapeutics, which announced earlier this month it brought in $300 million in funding its first year. “The additional capital that we can source from our limited partners, corporate partners, and public funds means we have the ability to bring as much as $200 million into a single company,” Nelsen said, more soberly, in a statement.

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