ARCH Venture Partners

In 1986, the ARCH Development Corporation was initially created by the University of Chicago and the Argonne National Laboratory as an non-profit initiative to commercialize the technology developed by them .[3][4][5][6][7][8] The name ARCH reflects this origin with "AR" from Argonne and "CH" from the University of Chicago.[7] ARCH Development Corporation was led by Steven Lazarus who was Deputy Dean of University of Chicago Booth School of Business.[6][7][9] Lazarus noted that that startup plans were hindered by lack of external capital so a venture fund would be created to provide it.[7][9]

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.[3][7][8][9] 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.[9] The first fund invested in twelve companies with 7-8 of them being successful investments.[6][7]

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 .[6][8] 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. [6][7][8]

The firm mainly invests in companies that are in the biotechnology, semiconductors and computing fields.[2][3][4][5]

ARCH Venture Partners is headquartered in Chicago with additional offices in Seattle, San Francisco and Dublin.[10]

On June 10, 2018, Lazarus passed away and the firm's management was succeeded by the other co-founders.[11]

• Official website