Robert Nelsen is a co-founder and a managing director of ARCH Venture Partners, and sits on the board of City Therapeutics. He has played a significant role in the creation, early sourcing, financing and development of more than 100 companies, including over 39 that have reached valuations exceeding $1 billion.

Mr. Nelsen is focused on generating new ideas for disruptive technologies or business models and partnering with founding management teams and entrepreneurs to execute on these visions by advancing novel platform technologies with the overarching goal of improving health care and outcomes. Recent successes include founding Altos Laboratories and Karuna Therapeutics, creating Xaira Therapeutics, founding National Resilience to transform pharma manufacturing in the U.S., Vir Biotechnology’s COVID-19 antibody therapy, and leading IPOs for Prime Medicine, Beam Therapeutics and Sana Biotechnology. 

Mr. Nelsen’s notable early-stage investments include Illumina, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Juno Therapeutics (sold to Celgene for $11.9 billion), Karuna Therapeutics (sold to BMS for $14 billion) and GRAIL (sold to Illumina for $10 billion). Other prominent biotechnology and life sciences company investments include Array BioPharma (sold to Pfizer for $11.4 billion), Receptos (sold to Celgene for $7.2 billion), Sage Therapeutics, Denali Therapeutics, Beam Therapeutics, Prime Medicine, Lyell Immunopharma, Editas Medicine, Agios Pharmaceuticals, Ikaria, deCODE Genetics (sold to Amgen), 10x Genomics and Semma Therapeutics (sold to Vertex Pharmaceuticals), among others.

He is a director of Altos Laboratories, Xaira Therapeutics, Vir Biotechnology, Sana Biotechnology, National Resilience, Lyell Immunopharma and Prime Medicine, and serves as chairman of Hua Medicine, among others. Mr. Nelsen holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and a B.S. from the University of Puget Sound, with majors in economics and biology.