Aera Therapeutics

Early-stage venture firm that focuses on life science discoveries to prevent, detect, and cure disease

Partners with companies and founders trying to change the world, who want to upend paradigms, not just chase incremental progress. Over the past two decades, Lux has expanded from their New York City roots to Silicon Valley, and built a $4 billion AUM firm of more than 30 full-time professionals, with a wide spectrum of technical backgrounds and the versatility to invest at any stage.

David co-leads GV’s life science investment team, where his interests include therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, novel care delivery systems, and payer innovation. David has been a hematologist and medical oncologist for over 30 years, and his focus has always been on people and impact.

Krishna helps steward the GV investing team and co-leads GV’s life sciences group. As an investor, he is interested in the entire healthcare spectrum, including care delivery, health IT, devices, diagnostics, payor/provider, and therapeutics. Krishna led GV’s early investments in Adimab, Foundation Medicine, Editas Medicine, Beam Therapeutics, One Medical, and Aledade.

Josh co-founded Lux Capital to support scientists and entrepreneurs who pursue counter-conventional solutions to the most vexing puzzles of our time in order to lead us into a brighter future. The more ambitious the project, the better—like, say, creating matter from light. Josh is a Director at Shapeways, Strateos, Lux Research, Kallyope, CTRL-labs, Variant, and Varda, and helped lead the firm’s investments in Anduril, Planet, Echodyne, Clarifai, Authorea, Resilience and Hadrian. He is a founding investor and board member with Bill Gates in Kymeta, making cutting-edge antennas for high-speed global satellite and space communications.

Robert Nelsen is a co-founder and a Managing Director of ARCH Venture Partners. He joined ARCH at its founding and played a significant role in the creation, early sourcing, financing and development of more than 150 companies, including 39 which 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. Some of his notable early-stage investments include Illumina (ILMN), Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY), Juno Therapeutics (JUNO – acquired by Celgene), Beam Therapeutics (BEAM), Karuna Therapeutics (KRTX), Altos Labs, EQRx, Lyell Immunopharma (LYEL), Array BioPharma (acquired by Pfizer), Unity Biotechnology (UBX), Hua Medicine (2552:HK), Vir Biotechnology (VIR), Agios Pharmaceuticals (AGIO), Sage Therapeutics (SAGE), GRAIL (acquired by Illumina), Gossamer Bio (GOSS), Ikaria (acquired by Mallinckrodt), Kythera Biopharmaceuticals (KYTH – acquired by Allergan), Receptos (RCPT – acquired by Celgene), Aviron (AVIR – acquired by MedImmune), Denali Therapeutics (DNLI), Rubius Therapeutics (RUBY), Syros Pharmaceuticals (SYRS), Sana Biotechnology (SANA), Verve Therapeutics (VERV), Brii Biosciences (2137:HK), Bluebird Bio (BLUE), R2 Technology (acquired by Hologic), Caliper Life Sciences (CALP – acquired by PerkinElmer), Trubion Pharmaceuticals (TRBN – acquired by Emergent Biosolutions), Adolor (ADLR – acquired by Cubist), deCODE Genetics (DCGN – acquired by Amgen), Editas (EDIT), 10x Genomics, Semma Therapeutics (acquired by Vertex), and IDUN Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Pfizer). Mr. Nelsen is a director of VIR, SANA, LYEL, National Resilience, Insitro, Prime Medicine, Nutcracker Therapeutics, Maze Therapeutics, Neumora Therapeutics, Brii Biosciences, and serves as Chairman of Hua Medicine, among others. He previously served as a Trustee of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute, the Institute of Systems Biology, and was a director of the National Venture Capital Association. Mr. Nelsen holds an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and a B.S. from the University of Puget Sound with majors in Economics and Biology.