Atlas Venture Bags $250M For New Growth Capital Fund

Atlas Venture says it has raised a $250 million fund meant to continue backing its startups as they grow.

The Cambridge, MA, life sciences venture firm, known for seeding and incubating biotech startups, will use the new “Atlas Venture Opportunity Fund I” to invest in portfolio companies that have progressed to a Series B round and beyond. The fund complements Atlas’s existing funds—most recently a $350 million haul in June 2017—which it uses to seed new biotechs. The new fund will be run by the same five-member team of Atlas partners.

Atlas once consisted of tech and biotech teams before splitting the two businesses in 2014, with the life sciences group keeping the Atlas name. The firm strictly invests in novel therapeutics, with most of its companies seeded within its offices. Those companies range from lean startups built around a single asset or program, to more capital-intensive drug discovery startups that pursue risky areas of biology.

Here’s more on Atlas, its investment approach, and some of its portfolio companies.

Author: Ben Fidler

Ben is former Xconomy Deputy Editor, Biotechnology. He is a seasoned business journalist that comes to Xconomy after a nine-year stint at The Deal, where he covered corporate transactions in industries ranging from biotech to auto parts and gaming. Most recently, Ben was The Deal’s senior healthcare writer, focusing on acquisitions, venture financings, IPOs, partnerships and industry trends in the pharmaceutical, biotech, diagnostics and med tech spaces. Ben wrote features on creative biotech financing models, analyses of middle market and large cap buyouts, spin-offs and restructurings, and enterprise pieces on legal issues such as pay-for-delay agreements and the Affordable Care Act. Before switching to the healthcare beat, Ben was The Deal's senior bankruptcy reporter, covering the restructurings of the Texas Rangers, Phoenix Coyotes, GM, Delphi, Trump Entertainment Resorts and Blockbuster, among others. Ben has a bachelor’s degree in English from Binghamton University.