BioTech: where's the money now?
In our biotechnology market deck, you will find everything you need to understand the market
SUMMARY
BioTech: where's the money now? The money is flowing into biotech categories where investors can already see the buyer, the exit path, or the infrastructure bottleneck becoming real.
The strongest categories are not just “hot science” categories. They are areas where public investors, private investors, and pharma buyers are all pointing in the same direction at the same time.
Obesity and cardiometabolic biotech is the clearest capital magnet today. Kailera’s $600 million private round followed by a $625 million IPO, plus Pfizer’s roughly $10 billion Metsera move, shows investors are still willing to pay up even in a market dominated by Lilly and Novo.
ADCs and targeted oncology look like the most powerful oncology category right now. The key signal is not only Parabilis breaking the biotech IPO record, but also Gilead paying $3.15 billion upfront for Tubulis and Roche repeatedly licensing China-origin ADC assets.
Radiopharma is no longer just a discovery story. Money is going into IPOs, pharma deals, private rounds, manufacturing capacity, and isotope supply, which makes the category look more like an industrial buildout than a short hype cycle.
Autoimmune reset is smaller by deal count, but unusually intense strategically. AbbVie, Lilly, and Gilead all moved quickly around in vivo cell therapy, B-cell reset, or T-cell engager approaches, suggesting pharma wants the mechanisms before the field becomes crowded.
AI-native drug discovery is still fundable, but the bar has changed. Investors are no longer paying for AI as a label; they are paying when AI is tied to proprietary biology, real programs, clinical progress, or serious pharma dollars.
Immunology, RNA, gene editing, and CNS are still investable, but they are more selective markets. The money is there when the mechanism is sharp, the delivery story is credible, or the patient population is commercially meaningful.
The pattern across the market is that vague platform stories are losing power. Capital is moving toward companies that can show a specific asset, a validated target, a buyer universe, or a bottleneck they can control.
The ranking is therefore less about which science is most exciting and more about where capital has already behaved unusually. Record IPOs, large upfront payments, fast acquisitions, repeated licensing, and infrastructure financing are stronger signals than narratives.
So the answer is pretty clear now: biotech money is currently concentrated in obesity, targeted oncology, radiopharma, autoimmune reset, and AI-native drug discovery, with the rest of the market funded more carefully and case by case.
This market map, featured in our biotechnology market deck, highlights top companies and startups in the biotechnology market
What categories of biotech companies are in this market?
Before we check where investor money is going, we need to understand the different categories of the biotech market.
| Category | Description | Example companies |
|---|---|---|
| Obesity and cardiometabolic biotech | Companies trying to build the next wave of obesity, diabetes, muscle-preserving, oral, monthly, amylin, or GLP-1/GIP drugs. | Kailera Therapeutics, Metsera, Verdiva Bio, Alveus Therapeutics, Structure Therapeutics, Zealand Pharma |
| ADCs and targeted oncology | Companies building drugs that deliver cancer-killing payloads more precisely into tumor cells. | Tubulis, Parabilis Medicines, Hansoh Pharma, DualityBio, RemeGen, Mersana |
| Radiopharmaceutical oncology | Companies attaching radioactive isotopes to tumor-targeting molecules to attack cancer more directly. | Aktis Oncology, Full-Life Technologies, RayzeBio, Mariana Oncology, ITM, Perspective Therapeutics |
| Autoimmune reset and in vivo cell therapy | Companies trying to reset the immune system, often through in vivo CAR-T, T-cell engagers, or B-cell depletion. | Capstan Therapeutics, Orna Therapeutics, Ouro Medicines, Kyverna, Cabaletta, Kelonia |
| Immunology and inflammation | Companies targeting chronic immune diseases such as IBD, lupus, asthma, and other inflammatory diseases. | Monte Rosa, Prometheus, Telavant, FutureGen, Teva/Sanofi programs |
| AI-native drug discovery | Companies using AI, proprietary datasets, automated chemistry, or biological modeling to discover drug candidates. | Isomorphic Labs, Insilico Medicine, Enveda, Xaira, Recursion, insitro |
| RNA therapeutics and oligonucleotides | Companies developing siRNA, ASO, mRNA, circular RNA, RNA delivery, or RNA-editing therapies. | Alnylam, Ionis, Arrowhead, Arnatar, Orna, ADARx |
| Gene editing and genetic medicines | Companies developing CRISPR, base editing, prime editing, or one-time genetic medicines. | Verve Therapeutics, Beam, Prime Medicine, Intellia, Aurora Therapeutics |
| Neuropsychiatry and CNS biotech | Companies developing drugs for schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, depression, pain, and other brain disorders. | MapLight, Rapport, Neumora, Alto Neuroscience, Engrail |
Is money flowing into obesity and cardiometabolic biotech right now?
Yes, obesity biotech is one of the clearest places where money is flowing right now.
One interesting thing is that investors are still paying up for obesity companies even after Lilly and Novo have made the market look brutally competitive.
Kailera is the cleanest recent example. In April 2026, it raised $625 million in an upsized IPO, after already raising a $600 million Series B in 2025. That is a rare one-two punch: a very large private round, then a record public listing less than a year later. And the IPO was not just big in absolute terms. It actually beat Moderna’s old biotech IPO benchmark from 2018, which tells us public investors were willing to underwrite obesity risk at real scale.
Then Parabilis broke that record in June 2026 with a $670 million IPO, but Kailera still matters because it showed that obesity was strong enough to reopen the window before the broader IPO market had fully normalized. That sequence is important. First radiopharma opened the year with Aktis. Then obesity pushed the IPO ceiling higher with Kailera. Then targeted oncology pushed it even higher with Parabilis.
The M&A signal is also strong. Pfizer bought Metsera after a competitive process involving Novo Nordisk, with the total deal value framed around roughly $10 billion. That was not a passive acquisition. Instead, it looked more like a pharma company deciding it could not afford to be weak in obesity anymore.
The private-market signal lines up with that. Verdiva launched with $411 million, Alveus raised $160 million, and several of these companies are not pitching “another weekly injection” but trying to solve the next bottlenecks: oral dosing, monthly dosing, muscle preservation, amylin combinations, or better tolerability.
So yes, money is flowing into obesity biotech today.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest biotechnology market report.
As this chart shows, and as featured in our biotechnology market deck, search interest in biotech has been trending upward
Is money flowing into ADCs and targeted oncology right now?
Yes, money is flowing heavily into ADCs and targeted oncology right now.
This may be the strongest oncology category in the market, especially when we include next-generation payloads, intracellular targeting, and China-origin assets.
The first signal is M&A. Gilead agreed in April 2026 to buy Tubulis for $3.15 billion upfront, with another $1.85 billion in possible milestones. That is a large upfront check for a company whose lead ADC was still in mid-stage trials. The message is pretty direct: if an ADC platform looks differentiated enough, pharma does not want to wait until Phase 3.
The second signal is that targeted oncology just set a new public-market benchmark. Parabilis raised $670 million in June 2026, above its expected range, and its shares jumped about 58% on the first trading day, according to the Wall Street Journal. That is not just a company getting public. That is public investors saying they will still pay for hard-science oncology platforms if the story feels specific enough.
The third signal is China. Roche licensed a Hansoh ADC for $80 million upfront and up to about $1.45 billion in milestones. Roche had already done China ADC deals before, including with Innovent and MediLink. The pattern matters more than any single deal: Western pharma is repeatedly going to China for oncology assets, not just for cheaper development, but because Chinese companies now have dense clinical pipelines, faster trial execution, and competitive ADC engineering.
There is also a capacity signal. ChinaMedAccess tracked 142 active ADC programs in Phase I to Phase III trials in China by Q2 2026. That number is almost too large to ignore. It tells us China is not a side market in ADCs anymore. It is becoming one of the main places where the next licensing wave is produced.
So it looks like pharma is buying better delivery, better payload logic, and faster clinical evidence, often from places investors used to underweight.
Is money flowing into radiopharmaceutical oncology right now?
Yes, radiopharma is still getting money right now, and the signal is better than a normal biotech hype cycle.
The money is showing up in IPOs, pharma licensing, private rounds, and even isotope supply.
Aktis was the first big biotech IPO of 2026. It raised $318 million in an upsized offering and priced at about a $1 billion market cap, according to Renaissance Capital. That is a useful signal because Aktis was not a late-stage commercial story. Investors were backing a platform with Phase 1b work and a plan to fund multiple radiopharma programs.
The second signal is that pharma keeps paying upfront for radiopharma even when assets are early. Bristol Myers, through RayzeBio, paid $350 million upfront for a PhiloChem prostate cancer radiopharmaceutical program, with the deal potentially worth more than $1.3 billion. That is a big upfront for a Phase 1-stage asset, and it shows that target novelty and strategic fit can still command real cash.
The third signal is manufacturing. Full-Life raised $150 million in May 2026 to advance clinical assets and expand manufacturing. That is more interesting than it sounds. In radiopharma, manufacturing and isotope access are not back-office problems. Actually, they are part of the moat. BioSpace also reported in March 2026 that the sector is racing to secure actinium-225 supply as pipelines expand.
That makes radiopharma feel different from a pure drug-discovery category. Investors are funding the asset, the platform, and the infrastructure needed to make the category work. When money starts moving into supply-chain control, it usually means people believe the market is moving from “cool science” to “real industrial buildout.”
So yes, money is flowing into radiopharma now. It is not as broad as obesity, but the conviction looks real because capital is going into the pieces that make commercialization possible.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest biotechnology market report.
This chart, featured in our biotechnology market deck, illustrates yearly venture capital funding for biotechnology startups
Is money flowing into autoimmune reset and in vivo cell therapy right now?
Yes, autoimmune reset is one of the most interesting places where money is flowing right now. It is not the biggest category by number of deals, but the strategic intensity is unusually high.
Capstan is the best example. AbbVie agreed to buy it for up to $2.1 billion in 2025. The company had raised about $340 million before that, with pharma investors including Pfizer, Bayer, Lilly, Bristol Myers, Novartis, and Johnson & Johnson participating across private rounds. That cap table is a signal by itself. When almost every large pharma wants a look before the exit, the category is probably becoming strategically important.
Then Lilly bought Orna for up to $2.4 billion in February 2026. Lilly described the deal around in vivo CAR-T and B-cell-driven autoimmune disease. That matters because Lilly had historically been cautious around traditional CAR-T complexity. The company is effectively saying: if cell therapy can be done inside the body, the accessibility problem starts to look more solvable.
Gilead then bought Ouro Medicines in March 2026 for about $1.7 billion upfront, with potential value near $2.2 billion. The strange part is how young Ouro was. It launched in early 2025 and sold roughly a year later. That is a very compressed formation-to-exit timeline, and it only happens when pharma wants the mechanism before the market becomes crowded.
The common thread is B-cell reset. Capstan, Orna, and Ouro are not identical technologies, but they all sit around the same big idea: instead of chronically suppressing autoimmune disease, maybe you can reset the immune system for longer periods. That is why the money feels early but serious.
So yes, money is flowing into autoimmune reset. The category is still technically risky, but pharma is already paying as if the winning platforms will become hard to buy later.
Is money flowing into immunology and inflammation right now?
Yes, but immunology money is more selective right now. Broad “inflammation platform” stories are less exciting. Specific targets with pharma competition still get attention.
TL1A is the best example of where money has been going. Merck bought Prometheus for $10.8 billion in 2023, Roche paid heavily for Telavant, and Sanofi/Teva and AbbVie/FutureGen-style deals kept the target class active. Even though those first deals are not all brand-new, they still shape today’s behavior because they taught the market that one target in IBD can trigger a full pharma land grab.
The fresher signal is Novartis and Monte Rosa. In October 2025, Novartis expanded its molecular-glue degrader relationship with Monte Rosa, paying $120 million upfront in a deal that could reach $5.7 billion. That is not a generic immunology bet. It is a bet that targeted protein degradation can open new biology in immune-mediated disease.
The interpretation is simple: money is flowing into immunology when the mechanism is sharp enough. If a company says “we treat inflammation,” that is weak. If it says “we can drug this validated immune pathway in a differentiated way,” pharma still listens.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest biotechnology market report.
This chart, featured in our biotechnology market deck, looks at Vertex’s strategy in biotechnology
Is money flowing into AI-native drug discovery right now?
Yes, money is still flowing into AI drug discovery, but the market has become much less forgiving. These days, “we use AI to find drugs” is not enough. The money is going to companies that can connect AI to actual programs, proprietary biology, pharma deals, or clinical progress.
Isomorphic Labs is the loudest signal. In May 2026, the Alphabet-founded company raised $2.1 billion in a Series B led by Thrive Capital, after raising $600 million in 2025. That jump is huge. It tells us investors are still willing to underwrite AI drug discovery at very large scale, but mostly when the team has unmatched technical credibility and enough capital to build an actual drug pipeline.
Insilico gives a different signal. In March 2026, Lilly signed a collaboration worth up to $2.75 billion, including $115 million upfront. That upfront matters because it is real cash, not just a headline milestone number. Lilly is not buying AI as a slideware tool; it is paying for a discovery engine attached to oral therapeutics and a clinical-stage biotech.
Enveda is another useful case because it looks less like “AI hype” and more like AI attached to a weird proprietary data advantage. It raised $150 million in September 2025, crossed unicorn status, and had raised about $350 million over the previous 15 months, according to Axios Pro. It also enrolled the first patient in its lead program. That combination matters: repeat funding, clinical movement, and a non-obvious source of chemical matter.
So yes, money is flowing into AI-native drug discovery. But the market is no longer paying for AI as a category label. It is paying when AI is paired with assets, data, clinical plans, or pharma dollars.
Is money flowing into RNA therapeutics and oligonucleotides right now?
Yes, money is still flowing into RNA, but the mood is more disciplined now.
The market has moved past the broad mRNA boom. Today, the money is more comfortable with siRNA, ASO, delivery, and programs where the path to product is clearer.
Nature’s 2025 RNA deal review made this point neatly: siRNA and ASO drugs still captured the highest upfront payments among RNA modalities, and oligo therapies accounted for nine of the ten highest-grossing RNA transactions over the reviewed 12-month period. That is a strong signal because it shows where pharma is actually willing to put cash upfront, not just where the science sounds exciting.
AbbVie’s ADARx deal is another useful signal. AbbVie paid $335 million upfront in 2025 to work with ADARx on siRNA programs across areas including neuroscience, immunology, and oncology. That is a serious upfront payment for a modality that has become more familiar to pharma and investors.
On the earlier-stage side, Arnatar launched in August 2025 with $52 million and a dual-modality RNA platform, including a clinical rare-disease asset. That is much smaller than the obesity or AI rounds, but it shows investors still fund new RNA companies when there is a real asset attached.
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest biotechnology market report.
This chart, featured in our biotechnology market deck, illustrates yearly funding for biotechnology startups
Is money flowing into gene editing and genetic medicines right now?
Some money is flowing into gene editing, but this is not one of the broadest hot zones right now.
The market still believes in the category. It just wants very specific proof.
The most important signal was Lilly’s Verve acquisition in 2025. Lilly paid about $1 billion upfront, with the deal worth up to $1.3 billion, for Verve’s cardiovascular gene-editing pipeline. Verve shares jumped roughly 75% after the announcement, and the deal valued the company at a major premium to its prior trading level. That is a clear sign that pharma still values in vivo gene editing when the target is large enough.
The reason Verve mattered is the indication. Cardiovascular disease is massive, PCSK9 is already validated, and a one-time therapy would fit nicely with Lilly’s broader cardiometabolic push. That is very different from a tiny rare-disease editing program where the science may be beautiful but the commercial path is narrow.
Aurora Therapeutics, co-founded by Jennifer Doudna, is another signal, but a different kind of signal. It points to continued company formation around personalized editing for rare disease. The opportunity is real, but it is also harder to scale, harder to price, and harder to industrialize.
Money is flowing into gene editing, but carefully. Today’s market seems to fund genetic medicines when the target is big, the delivery story is credible, and pharma can see how the program fits into a broader franchise.
Is money flowing into neuropsychiatry and CNS biotech right now?
Some money is flowing into CNS, but it is not leading the biotech market right now. CNS is warming up rather than exploding.
MapLight is the best recent signal. In 2025, the company sought an IPO of roughly $227 million to $251 million for its neuropsychiatry pipeline. That matters because public investors had avoided a lot of CNS risk for years, especially after repeated failures in psychiatry and Alzheimer’s. A company even attempting that kind of raise shows the window is not closed.
But when we compare CNS to obesity, ADCs, radiopharma, or immune reset, the signal density is weaker. We see IPO attempts and selective financings, but we do not see the same cluster of $2 billion acquisitions, record IPOs, repeated pharma bidding, and fast company-to-exit timelines.
The money that does flow into CNS now tends to go toward cleaner stories: better-defined patients, measurable endpoints, stronger biomarkers, or mechanisms that are easier to explain than old “black box” psychiatry. That is why CNS is investable again in pieces, but it is not where the strongest capital heat sits today.
So yes, some money is flowing into CNS biotech. However, CNS is behind obesity, targeted oncology, radiopharma, autoimmune reset, and AI-native drug discovery.
This chart, featured in our biotechnology market deck, compares the main business model options for biotech platform companies
So where is the money in biotech right now?
Money in biotech is going to categories where investors do not need to imagine the buyer.
In obesity, the buyer is obvious. In ADCs and radiopharma, pharma is already buying. In autoimmune reset, pharma is buying before the category is fully proven. In AI drug discovery, the money is still there, but only when the company looks like a real biotech, not just a model demo.
| Rank | Category | Why the money is there now |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Obesity and cardiometabolic biotech | Kailera raised $600 million privately, then $625 million in an IPO; Pfizer bought Metsera after a competitive obesity process; Verdiva and Alveus raised unusually large early rounds. |
| 2 | ADCs and targeted oncology | Parabilis broke the biotech IPO record in June 2026; Gilead bought Tubulis for $3.15 billion upfront; Roche and others keep licensing China-origin ADCs. |
| 3 | Radiopharmaceutical oncology | Aktis opened 2026 with a $318 million IPO at about a $1 billion market cap; BMS paid $350 million upfront for a radiopharma asset; Full-Life raised $150 million partly around manufacturing. |
| 4 | Autoimmune reset and in vivo cell therapy | AbbVie bought Capstan for up to $2.1 billion; Lilly bought Orna for up to $2.4 billion; Gilead bought Ouro roughly one year after it launched. |
| 5 | AI-native drug discovery | Isomorphic raised $2.1 billion; Lilly signed a $2.75 billion Insilico deal with $115 million upfront; Enveda raised repeat capital and moved into clinical development. |
| 6 | Immunology and inflammation | TL1A showed that one immune target can trigger pharma competition; Novartis expanded Monte Rosa with $120 million upfront and up to $5.7 billion in potential value. |
| 7 | RNA therapeutics and oligonucleotides | Nature’s RNA deal review showed oligos still capture the strongest RNA upfronts; AbbVie paid $335 million upfront to ADARx; Arnatar launched with a clinical RNA asset. |
| 8 | Gene editing and genetic medicines | Lilly bought Verve for up to $1.3 billion, but the deal worked because PCSK9 and cardiovascular disease are commercially large; broader gene editing remains selective. |
| 9 | Neuropsychiatry and CNS biotech | MapLight and other CNS stories show reopening, but the category has fewer recent mega-deals and fewer abnormal capital signals than the leading areas. |
If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest biotechnology market report.
This chart, featured in our biotechnology market deck, breaks down revenue across customer segments in the biotechnology market
OUR METHODOLOGY
This analysis tests where biotech money is flowing right now based on the evidence available today. We broke the market into investable categories and compared recent capital signals inside each one.
We focused on signals that show money actually moving: IPOs, private financings, acquisitions, licensing upfronts, pharma bidding behavior, and infrastructure investment.
We then aggregated those signals category by category, rather than treating one large deal as enough to define a whole market.
The final ranking reflects where the evidence was freshest, densest, and most consistent across different types of capital. Categories ranked higher when public investors, private investors, and strategic buyers were pointing in the same direction.
We treated IPO size, IPO pricing, first-day trading, acquisition upfronts, milestone potential, licensing upfronts, private financing size, and infrastructure investment as stronger signals than broad reputation or general market excitement.
We also gave more weight to categories where multiple types of buyers or investors were active at once. For example, obesity, ADCs, radiopharma, autoimmune reset, and AI-native drug discovery all showed more than one form of capital movement.
When we refer to money “flowing” into a category, we mean that recent deals show investors or pharma buyers committing meaningful capital, not simply that the science is interesting.
We prioritized sources that added specific, checkable information: IPO proceeds, private-round size, acquisition value, licensing upfronts, milestone potential, pharma buyer identity, clinical stage, infrastructure investment, and comparable capital signals across categories.
Key sources used for this analysis include: Fierce Biotech on Kailera Therapeutics’ $625 million IPO, The Wall Street Journal on Parabilis Medicines’ record IPO and first-day trading, Pfizer on the Metsera acquisition, Business Wire on Verdiva Bio’s launch financing, Alveus Therapeutics on its $160 million Series A, Gilead on the Tubulis acquisition, Hansoh Pharma on the Roche ADC licensing deal, ChinaMedAccess on China’s ADC pipeline, Renaissance Capital on Aktis Oncology’s IPO, BioPharma Dive on Bristol Myers’ PhiloChem radiopharma deal, Full-Life Technologies on its $150 million financing, BioSpace on actinium-225 supply pressure, AbbVie on the Capstan Therapeutics acquisition, Lilly on the Orna Therapeutics acquisition, Gilead on the Ouro Medicines acquisition, Fierce Biotech on Novartis and Monte Rosa, Nature on RNA therapeutic deals, Isomorphic Labs on its Series B, Insilico Medicine on its Lilly collaboration, Enveda on its Series D and clinical progress, AbbVie on the ADARx siRNA collaboration, Fierce Biotech on Lilly and Verve Therapeutics, and MapLight Therapeutics on its IPO pricing.
This chart, featured in our biotechnology market deck, shows how at-home genetic testing technology has evolved over time
Related blog posts
- How strong is fundraising in the biotechnology market right now?
- The startups that have raised the most funding in the biotechnology market
- The most highly valued startups in the biotechnology market
