Kailera Therapeutics, a high-profile drug startup aiming to compete with Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly in obesity, said Thursday it banked $625 million in one of the sector’s largest-ever initial public offerings.
The IPO haul far surpasses the $500 million it set out to raise in terms set earlier this week. Kailera sold more than 39 million shares at $16 apiece. It’ll begin trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday under the ticker symbol “KLRA.”
Kailera’s offering is among the biggest, by total proceeds, raised by a venture-backed biopharmaceutical company, according to BioPharma Dive data. Its IPO eclipses Acelyrin’s $540 million stock sale in 2023, Sana Biotechnology’s $588 million issuance in 2021, and Moderna’s then-record $604 million pricing in 2018.
The sizable IPO continues an early trend in 2026. While offerings haven’t yet picked up to the kind of pace investors had hoped, the six drugmakers that did go public in the first quarter secured a combined $1.7 billion in IPOs. The median $287.5 million raised across those offerings ranked as the highest for any quarter since 2021, data show.
For Kailera, the offering continues a fast ascent. The company started up in 2024 and has been bankrolled by prominent investors like Bain Capital, Atlas Venture and Arch Venture Partners. It’s since raised more than $1 billion in private funding to advance a portfolio of experimental weight loss drugs licensed from Shanghai-based Hengrui Pharmaceuticals.
Kailera’s rise to prominence has coincided with an explosion of interest among venture capitalists in drugs originating from China. Several firms have recently built new companies around medicines originating in Chinese labs, and some, like Candid Therapeutics and Aiolos Bio, have struck deals to either go public or be acquired.
In Kailera’s case, the company is advancing medicines it hopes can compete with drugs like Lilly’s Zepbound and Novo’s Wegovy. Like Zepbound, Kailera’s lead program ribupatide is a shot targeting two gut hormones, GLP-1 and GIP. Last year, that drug succeeded in a late-stage study in China, helping trial participants lose an average of 18% of their body weight after 48 weeks.
In its IPO filing, Kailera said that ribupatide was designed to have a “superior” clinical profile to Zepbound, with preclinical data suggesting the potential for higher potency and longer-lasting effects. Ribupatide is now in a global Phase 3 study, with results expected in 2028. It’s testing a higher dosage in a separate, Phase 2b study that should read out in 2027.
Kailera is also evaluating an oral version of the drug, which demonstrated in a Phase 2 study in China that it helped people with obesity lose an average of 12% of their body weight. A global mid-stage study is expected to start this year, with results coming in 2027. Two other medicines — a small molecule GLP-1 pill as well as a triple-acting, injectable therapy — are in human testing, too.
The company is led by Ron Renaud, a veteran biotech executive who’s previously led and sold three other drug companies — Idenix Pharmaceuticals, Translate Bio and Cerevel Therapeutics.
Despite Lilly and Novo’s dominant position in obesity, investors and pharmaceutical companies are still betting that there is room for additional treatments. The last obesity drugmaker to go public, Metsera, raised $275 million in its January 2025 IPO and was bought by Pfizer for $10 billion several months later. Viking Therapeutics and Structure Therapeutics, two other publicly traded biotechs working on weight loss drugs, are both worth more than $3 billion.
Earlier this week, two more biotech companies, brain drug developer Seaport Therapeutics and blood disorder specialist Hemab Therapeutics, outlined IPO plans with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
