The COVID-19 epidemic has devastated the economy, but that hasn’t stopped one of the state’s best-known financiers of life sciences startups from raising $400 million to create new biotechs.
Cambridge-based Atlas Venture said Friday that it had completed a fundraising campaign that began in March and was oversubscribed, despite the lock-down on the economy. Since 2017, the venture capital firm has raised $1 billion across three funds to create companies that try to develop new medicines.
Michael Gladstone, a principal in Atlas who was named a partner in the announcement, said investors are optimistic about the long-term future of biotech despite the downturn that has left millions of Americans unemployed.
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“If anything, [the pandemic] has reinforced for a lot of our investors the importance and centrality of scientific innovation and medicine development,” he said.
Atlas has invested in 42 active biotech companies, including 13 that have gone public. Publicly traded companies with Atlas backing include Intellia Therapueutics, a Cambridge gene-editing firm, and Replimune, a Woburn company working on cancer treatments.
Atlas, which is based in Kendall Square, has invested more than $2 billion in life sciences firms startups since 1990. The new fund is the 12th created by the venture capitalists for early-stage startups.
Gladstone joined Atlas in 2012 and has worked on several of its portfolio companies, including Akero, AVROBIO, Delinia and IFM Therapeutics. With an undergraduate degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard College and a particular interest in immunology and oncology, he the only one of the six partners without an advanced degree. The others have medical degrees, master’s degrees in business administration and PhDs.
“This is an industry that’s overflowing with incredibly talented, very smart people,” Gladstone, 33, said from his home in Cambridge. “My lack of having that post-graduate education is somewhat atypical. My goal is to be at a level of fluency where I don’t have all the answers, but I want to be ready to have the right kinds of questions and know whom to ask them to.”
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Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at jonathan.saltzman@globe.com