Flagship Ventures, a leading venture capital firm focused on healthcare and sustainability, today announced the year-end 2011 close of its largest fund to date, raising $270 million for Flagship Ventures Fund IV L.P., exceeding its target of $250 million. Investors in Flagship Ventures Fund IV include pension funds, foundations, fund-of-funds, corporations and individuals. Joining prior fund investors were several new limited partners.

Flagship Ventures Fund IV builds on the early successes of the firm's last fund, a $235 million pool launched in 2007, with a portfolio of 24 ventures that includes lead investments in Agios, Joule Unlimited, Selecta, and Accuri (acquired by Becton Dickinson in 2011). With the closing of the new fund, Flagship Ventures now has more than $900 million of early-stage capital under management.

Since its founding in 2000, Flagship Ventures has operated through two synergistic units: Flagship Venture Capital and Flagship VentureLabs. The firm has built a portfolio of over 65 venture investments of which 25 emanated from its in-house venture creation group, VentureLabs. Notable exits have included Adnexus Therapeutics, Morphotek, Hypnion, CGI, Aveo, BG Medicine, and Accuri.

"We are quite pleased by the market's reaction to our fourth fund," said Noubar Afeyan, Flagship Ventures' managing partner and chief executive officer. "Despite the difficult environment for fundraising, especially for early-stage venture firms, we received strong support from our prior investors, as well as from several new important limited partners. We believe that the firm's investment strategy and greater than ten year history of building valuable, transformative companies are well aligned with the world's ever increasing reliance on innovation, entrepreneurship and value creation."

In addition to investing in early-stage companies, Flagship Ventures will dedicate a portion of Fund IV to later-stage value investing opportunities resulting from the current capital-constrained environment.

About Flagship VentureLabs

Flagship VentureLabs is the first institutional platform for accelerated innovation and parallel entrepreneurship, where the processes of technology invention in healthcare and sustainability, and company conception are merged and rapidly iterated to generate high-potential new ventures that impact and shape the world's future. By starting as a low-cost exploratory project, the founding team, comprising Flagship's professional entrepreneurs and leading academics, conceives and iterates the business model while validating the opportunity for a market-disruptive company and developing substantial intellectual property. By engaging in the entrepreneurial process directly, Flagship develops a cutting-edge market understanding in the life sciences and sustainability arenas and maintains extensive networks within these fields.

About Flagship Ventures

Realizing entrepreneurial innovation is the mission of Flagship Ventures. The firm operates through two synergistic units: VentureLabs which invents and launches transformative companies, and Venture Capital, which finances and realizes innovative, early-stage companies. Founded in 2000, and based in Cambridge, Mass., Flagship Ventures manages over $900 million in capital. Several examples of successful companies include Joule Unlimited, Acceleron Pharma, Accuri Cytometers, AVEO and Adnexus. The Flagship team innovates and invests in three principal business sectors: therapeutics, medical technologies, and sustainability/clean technology. For more information, visit www.flagshipventures.com.