Dive Brief:

• Biotechnology initial public offerings have continued to price at a slow pace in the first three months of 2026, but the amount raised in their initial share sales has soared compared to previous years.
• Biopharma companies collectively banked $1.7 billion in IPOs in the first quarter of 2026, the most of any quarter since 2021, according to BioPharma Dive data. Three of those companies raised more than $300 million, a benchmark rarely seen since the sector's peak in 2021.
• So far in 2026, biotechs have raised a median of $287.5 million, more than double what was seen during January and March of last year and the highest of any quarter since 2021. But the number of total offerings were largely similar to what was seen between 2022 and 2025, years that represented departures from pre-pandemic norms.

Dive Insight:

Biotech investors were optimistic at the beginning of 2026 that IPOs were poised for a long-awaited rebound. But the numbers haven’t spiked as they’d hoped, said Jonathan Norris, a managing director at HSBC Innovation Banking, which tracks financing and deal trends for young healthcare companies.

Two culprits may be “macro economic factors and revolving door at [the] FDA,” he said. Renaissance Capital, a prominent IPO research firm, had similar sentiments in a quarterly review, noting how “surging volatility,” including the war in the Middle East, “grounded the IPO party before it took off.”  

The biotechs that have managed to price an offering so far in 2026 continue to fit the mold of the companies that saw the most success in 2025. All but one had drugs in mid- or late-stage clinical testing. They also all previously raised large amounts of venture funding, and were developing drugs in hot areas of research such as autoimmune conditions or cancer.

Offerings remain largely shut to companies not meeting this criteria. BioPharma Dive data show that no preclinical companies have gone public since 2024. But some investors believe that could change in the months ahead.

“As the market continues to perform, we should see more companies pursuing the IPO route, including smaller offerings and potentially earlier-stage or higher-risk opportunities,” said Antoine Papiernik, managing partner and chairman of venture capital firm Sofinnova Partners.

Should the window open for those higher-risk opportunities, companies that have had a harder time going public of late — such as cell and gene therapy developers — could be beneficiaries. The last one to go public, Artiva Biotherapeutics, did so in July 2024.

Companies with broad drugmaking platforms that typically take time to mature could benefit, too. Biotechs built around one or even a few drug prospects have made up the bulk of recent biotech offerings, and the year’s best-performing newly public company, Veradermics, is primarily focused on a single therapy for hair loss.

The investor demand for those offerings encouraged some platform-centric counterparts, such as Eikon Therapeutics and Generate Biomedicines, to test the public markets too. Both priced lucrative IPOs, but at lower valuations than they’d once commanded as private companies. They also both currently trade below their offering price. 

“Product-focused companies built around clinically grounded programs are forming the backbone of the window, while larger platform-oriented issuers are testing how far investor appetite can extend beyond near-term validation,” Ben Zercher, a senior biotech and pharma analyst at PitchBook, wrote in a February statement.

Investors have told BioPharma Dive that they’ve increasingly pushed their portfolio companies to consider the public markets. Norris suggests that 20 offerings would be considered a “good year” for the sector, as it’d represent an improvement over 2025's paltry total of 11 and more in line with what was seen in the few years prior. 

Six other companies have made public their plans for an IPO in recent weeks. None have priced since late February and one, Option Therapeutics, slashed the size of its planned offering. The most recent, Kailera Therapeutics, officially filed its IPO plans on Friday.