Atlas Venture

Atlas Venture is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotechnology venture capital firm with a distinctive company creation model: rather than waiting to evaluate founder pitches, Atlas actively identifies promising scientific discoveries from academic and government research institutions, recruits founding management teams, and builds companies from the ground up. The firm was originally founded in 1980 in Europe and established a US presence focused on technology and biotech before concentrating exclusively on biopharmaceuticals. Atlas invests primarily at seed and Series A stages in therapeutics and digital health companies, with initial checks from $2 million to $10 million and substantial reserves for follow-on investment across its portfolio companies. The firm's approach of company creation rather than portfolio construction has generated some of the most significant outcomes in recent biotech venture history. Cerevel Therapeutics, a neuroscience company Atlas co-founded with Pfizer, was acquired by AbbVie for approximately $8.7 billion in 2024. Dice Therapeutics, a company focused on oral protein therapeutics, was acquired by Eli Lilly for $2.4 billion in 2023. Imago BioSciences was acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb for $1.35 billion in 2022. Agios Pharmaceuticals, which Atlas co-founded, is publicly traded on Nasdaq and developed the first IDH inhibitor drugs approved by the FDA for certain blood cancers. Beyond its original investments in Agios, Cerevel, Dice Therapeutics, and Imago, the Atlas portfolio includes numerous clinical-stage biotechnology companies built through its co-founding model.