Built for the Bold Pursuit of Cures

The Richard King Mellon Foundation committed up to $25 million to launch the non-profit, Rare Ventures, a first-of-its-kind platform for accelerating rare disease therapies. The Pittsburgh-based venture philanthropy platform unites leading patient foundation EB Research Partnership with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Vision Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford Medicine and ElevateBio. Together, these partners combine artificial intelligence, clinical research, therapeutic development, manufacturing and commercialization into a single engine built to accelerate treatments and cures for rare diseases.

Rare Ventures is a first-of-its-kind venture philanthropy platform dedicated to accelerating the development of therapies and cures for rare diseases. Built on the belief that every patient deserves solutions and every breakthrough deserves a path to patients, Rare Ventures brings together artificial intelligence, patient data, basic and translational research, clinical development, regulatory strategy, manufacturing, and commercialization into a single integrated engine for innovation.

Founded by leaders in patient advocacy, business, science, medicine, philanthropy, and biotechnology, Rare Ventures is creating a new model for transforming scientific discoveries into approved treatments: one designed to move faster, scale further, and reinvest success back into future cures. By combining the discipline of venture capital with the mission of philanthropy, Rare Ventures aims to do for rare disease medicine what venture capital did for technology: create the infrastructure, partnerships, and sustainable funding model needed to accelerate innovation at scale.

Headquartered in Pittsburgh and built for the world, Rare Ventures seeks to create a future where no rare disease is too rare to matter.