Original Coverage & Source Attribution: www.biospace.com
Venture capital funding into biopharma companies topped $16 billion in the first half of the year, and the money continued to flow into the industry in the third quarter. But it continues to be a story of haves and have nots, experts say.
“We’re seeing more capital being deployed even as overall deal activity remains constrained,” Dan Greaney, executive director of Life Sciences, Innovation Economy at J.P. Morgan, told BioSpace in an email interview. Money is “tending to flow toward later-stage, more de-risked assets, resulting in a small number of companies to receive larger amounts of capital.”
Proximal Ventures’ Sahir Raoof agreed. While biopharma is currently enjoying a “stronger financing environment,” the true picture is more nuanced. “The amount of money being raised doesn’t tell the story of how broadly that money is available,” he told BioSpace over email. “Capital is concentrated.”
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Jim Polson, senior managing director at FTI Consulting, pointed to AdvanCell’s $315 million raise this quarter and Encoded’s $275 million as signs of “continued investor interest in more advanced, increasingly de-risked programs with clear paths to meaningful clinical milestones.” AdvanCell is pushing its lead radiopharma asset into Phase 3, while Encoded is also moving into pivotal development for its gene upregulation therapy for Dravet syndrome.
Another funding pattern that carried from the first half of the year to Q3 is the “growing investment in companies explicitly mentioning the use of AI and computational approaches to discover and develop medicines,” Raoof added.
He highlighted several of this year’s biggest rounds so far that have involved a focus on AI: Isomorphic Labs’ mammoth $2.1 billion series B, Parabilis Medicines’ $305 million series F and NewLimit’s $435 million series C. Raoof also pointed to Enveda, which uses a proprietary machine learning engine to unveil the therapeutic potential of molecules that already exist in nature. Enveda closed one of this quarter’s largest VC rounds.
Here, BioSpace takes a closer look at Enveda, AdvanCell and the other companies that raised Q3’s largest venture rounds.
Chai Discovery
Date: July 14
Round: Series C
Raise: $400 million
Topping the Q3 VC leaderboard is Chai Discovery, which in July commanded a $400 million round to further advance its AI models intended to accelerate preclinical drug discovery. The series C push, which included contributions from OpenAI and other big names, valued Chai at $3.8 billion.
Chai develops machine learning models that take into account biological structure and function to generate new molecules from scratch, the company said in the July news release. This approach aims to do away with the traditional trial-and-error approach to drug discovery and could open up disease targets that had previously been difficult to address.
Chai’s latest model is called Chai-3, which the biotech claims “materially improves” the success rates of generated antibodies over previous versions of the model.
This platform has won Chai many Big Pharma customers, including Eli Lilly, which in January brought the biotech on to create a purpose-built AI model exclusively for the pharma’s use. Financial details of the deal were not announced. Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer, Novartis and argenx have also lined up to work with Chai, each leveraging the biotech’s AI platform for de novo drug discovery.
Chai’s impressive fundraising round, led by Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Sequioa Capital and Dimension, comes as tech money floods into biopharma, spurred by the rise of AI. The biggest symbol of this trend is Alphabet’s Isomorphic Labs, which in May raised $2.1 billion in series B money—the second-largest VC round in the industry’s history.
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AdvanCell
Date: July 16
Round: Series D
Raise: $315 million
Just days behind Chai is AdvanCell, which landed a $315 series D windfall that could help the Sydney- and Boston-based biotech break into one of the hottest modality markets in biopharma.
AdvanCell is developing targeted alpha radiotherapies for cancer. The company’s lead asset is ADVC001, a lead-212–based candidate designed to target the PSMA protein for the treatment of metastatic prostate cancer. ADVC001 is currently in a Phase 1b/2a study for this indication, with topline data expected in 2029. AdvanCell hopes to use the fundraising proceeds to advance the asset into late-stage development.
The series D will also allow the biotech to boost its U.S. manufacturing capabilities, supporting a better supply of the lead-212 isotope—largely in preparation for Phase 3 studies of the asset as well as future commercial demand. The new funding will also accelerate AdvanCell’s pipeline of targeted alpha candidates, the company said.
Ally Bridge Group and Alpha Wave co-led AdvanCell’s series D, with participation from big names across the industry, including Bain Capital Life Sciences, Eli Lilly and Sanofi Ventures.
Currently, the radiopharma space is dominated by Novartis, which owns the FDA-approved Lutathera, indicated for gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, and the prostate cancer therapy Pluvicto. Both of these products use the beta-emitter lutetium-177. The pharma is also developing a radiopharma therapy based on actinium-225, which belongs to the more powerful alpha-emitter class.
AdvanCell’s lead-212 isotope is also an alpha-emitting particle but has a much shorter half-life than actinium-225. This could enable a better safety profile, as is hinted at in the Phase 1b dose-escalation portion of AdvanCell’s Phase 1/2 TheraPb trial, which found no dose-limiting toxicities or treatment-related serious adverse events.
At the intersection of radiation and precision, Novartis, Bayer, AstraZeneca and more hope to cash in on a radiopharmaceuticals market that could top $16 billion by 2033.
May 12, 2025
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Enveda
Date: Sept. 23
Round: Series E
Raise: $311 million
Hopping on the AI train is Enveda, which late last month collected $311 million in its series E round to advance a trio of drug candidates, including an “exercise in a tablet” asset for obesity. Enveda has now raised more than $845 million since its inception.
This investigational oral weight loss therapy, called ENV-308, showed “exceptional” gastrointestinal safety in a Phase 1 study that included 88 healthy adults, the company announced in August without providing specific data.
Enveda is also working on ENV-294, an oral drug candidate that in July lowered disease severity in a Phase 1 atopic dermatitis study. ENV-294 is also being tested for asthma. Then there’s ENV-6946, a TL1A+ pathway blocker being studied for inflammatory bowel disease.
Enveda plans to use the series E proceeds to advance its three clinical-stage assets into later-stage testing and explore their potential in other indications, the company said last month, noting that new trials are set to start in the coming months.
In addition, Enveda will use its fresh capital to continue developing its proprietary PRISM platform, an AI-powered engine that predicts the structures and therapeutic potential of existing molecules. Enveda currently has 14 development candidates, produced through PRISM, in preclinical development.
Enveda’s series E was led by Catalio Capital Management, with participation from T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Durable Capital Partners and Lightspeed.
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September 23, 2026
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Encoded Therapeutics
Date: Sept. 9
Round: Series F
Raise: $275 million
Precision medicine developer Encoded Therapeutics makes the cut for this list with its $275 million series F round early last month, which the company plans to use to take its lead asset into pivotal development.
Encoded is working on ETX101, an investigational gene upregulation therapy that the biotech is positioning as a one-time therapy for Dravet syndrome, a rare epileptic encephalopathy caused by mutations in the SCN1A gene. ETX101, which is delivered directly into the brain, boosts the expression of SCN1A.
The asset is in the Phase 1/2 POLARIS study, which last month showed a strong reduction in monthly countable seizures. The series F money will help drive pivotal development for ETX101. Encoded also plans to use the proceeds to build up another asset, dubbed ETX391, for a 2027 regulatory filing seeking permission to start clinical testing.
Aside from advancing its pipeline, part of the series F haul will also go toward scaling up manufacturing capabilities, Encoded said.
Encoded’s fundraising push was co-led by GV (Google Ventures) and an undisclosed healthcare fund. Other institutional investors to participate included Illumina Ventures, RTW Investments and ARCH Venture Partners.
Encoded Therapeutics’ lead asset ETX101 is a gene therapy being tested for Dravet syndrome. Phase 1/2 data showed substantial reductions in seizures.
September 10, 2026
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Solstice Oncology
Date: Sept. 9
Round: Series A
Raise: $225 million
Capping off this list is Solstice Oncology, which had the biggest biopharma launch in Q3, netting $225 million for its series A round in early September.
Solstice will use the money to bankroll the development of porustobart, an anti-CTLA-4 antibody that the startup licensed from China’s Harbour BioMed for $105 million, covering a $50 million upfront payment, $5 million in near-term commitments and $50 million in Solstice equity. The Boston-based biotech also put up to $1.1 billion on the line in development, regulatory and commercial milestones.
Solstice plans to combine porustobart with Merck’s mega-blockbuster PD-1 drug Keytruda. The FDA has given the go-ahead for the regimen to be tested in a Phase 2 study for neoadjuvant advanced colon cancer and another undisclosed disease, with data slated for the back half of 2027.
A Phase 2 study conducted by Harbour showed that porustobart, when used alongside BeOne Medicines’ PD-1 inhibitor Tevimbra, elicited a 30% objective response rate as a late-line option in patients with microsatellite-stable metastatic colorectal cancer without liver metastases, Solstice said in September.
Solstice’s series A was led by RA Capital Management, with participation from Forbion, Canaan Partners and other backers.
Solstice Oncology, founded in February, is emerging from stealth having already secured an investigational new drug application from the FDA for a Phase 2 trial of a CTLA-4 antibody purchased from China’s Harbour BioMed.
September 9, 2026
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2 min read
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