On the heels of a $3 billion fund from Bain Capital Life Sciences, Arch Venture Partners is proving it can go toe-to-toe with the other investor, closing a VC fund of "more than $3 billion."
The venture fund is Arch's 13th and will support the founding and buildup of early-stage biotech companies, according to a Sept. 26 announcement.
Though Arch didn’t get into detail about its goals for the new tranche of cash, the venture firm noted that beneficiaries of “Fund XIII” already include programmable cell therapy company ArsenalBio, inflammatory and fibrotic disease specialist Mirador Therapeutics, artificial intelligence drug discovery startup Xaira Therapeutics and Metsera, which just this week unveiled data on a new GLP-1 receptor agonist.
AI and data-driven insights into biology will be key for the future of healthcare, Robert Nelsen, Arch co-founder and managing director, stressed in a statement.
"Arch is first and foremost a company builder; we foster innovation at scale to develop new technologies and medicines as rapidly as possible," Keith Crandell, managing director and Arch’s other co-founder, added in the firm’s release. "We remain incredibly excited by the pace of innovation and efforts to understand disease at a deeper level."
Arch’s latest venture fund tops 2022’s “Fund XII,” which capped out at around $2.98 billion.
Several of 2024’s largest private biotech financing rounds have come thanks in part to Arch’s investments in ArsenalBio, Xaira, Mirador and Metsera.
"We want to know who wants to build something big and stay with it," Arch’s Nelsen told Fierce Biotech earlier this year.
The big money round comes a few weeks after Bain Capital Life Sciences revealed $3 billion in commitments for its fourth funding round, with $2.5 billion from new and current investors and the remaining $500 million sourced from Bain’s partners and affiliates.
“The fund will draw on BCLS’ multi-decade investment experience to invest scale capital globally in transformative medicines, medical devices, diagnostics and life sciences tools that have the potential to improve the lives of patients with unmet medical needs,” Bain said in a release at the time.
Earlier this year, J.P. Morgan pointed toward a return to biotech growth, citing new venture investments, steady M&A deals and an increasingly widening IPO market. In the second quarter, biopharmas raised $7.6 billion in private equity financing across 107 investments, J.P. Morgan said in a July report.