Nearly 100 biotechs went public amid the industry’s IPO frenzy in 2021, driven by an influx of pandemic-driven investments. But many of those companies have little to show investors.
Four years ago, as a killer virus was sweeping across the globe and forcing entire countries to shut down, biopharma was in the midst of a goldrush.
Money was flowing into the industry at record levels. Investments spread from helping find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19 to the broader life sciences industry. This led to a pile up of initial public offerings among biotechs in 2021. In total, the year saw 99 biotechs hit the public markets, by BioSpace’s tally, raising $15.6 billion—more than in 2023 and 2024 combined.
The boom was a “masterclass in what happens when scientific momentum meets monetary excess,” Mayo Venture Partner Audrey Greenberg told BioSpace in an email. “At the time, I remember thinking it felt like biotech’s version of speed dating: everyone wanted to fall in love with the next Moderna, and no one wanted to miss the match.”
But, as Greenberg said, “gravity always returns.” Fast forward to now, and many of those companies that reached the public markets have little to show investors. Some have even gone bankrupt.
This downturn “revealed how financial momentum can outpace biological maturity,” Stella Vnook, CEO of drug delivery biotech Likarda and a serial entrepreneur, told BioSpace in an email. During the pandemic boom, companies went public largely on the basis of their science, she explained, without mature data or infrastructure to back it up.
While difficult, the market contraction that has since occurred “forced the sector to return to fundamentals,” according to Vnook. Companies now have to show clinical validation, quality execution and operational discipline to attract investors. Vnook insisted, though, that the current state of the industry is “not a collapse.”
“It’s a recalibration,” she said.
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For Mike Perrone, managing director and healthcare specialist at the investment firm Baird, the 2021 IPO rush left what he called a “logical gap” in the industry. Scores of companies entered the public market before they were ready to, resulting in what Perrone called a “pull-forward of future IPOs.” In the meantime, other early biotechs stayed in the private markets, biding their time and moving along their typical development paths.
But biopharma has almost made up that gap, Perrone estimated, and today the industry has a “healthy” roster of later-stage companies that are properly positioned to go public. Indeed, there has been a notable uptick in megarounds in the back half of 2025, particularly for companies further on in clinical development—an indicator of market interest in mature science.
Kailera’s $600 million series B in October, for example, was anchored by its Phase III-ready obesity program, while Tubulis’ $361 million raise that same month will help wrap up mid-stage testing for its antibody-drug conjugate. There have been 11 biotech IPOs this year so far, most recently Evommune’s November IPO with gross proceeds of $172.5 million.
“The broader IPO market opened up in 2H25, and while it took a pause during the recent government shutdown, expectations are that the balance of 4Q25 and early-2026 will see healthy broader market new issuance,” Perrone said.
Below, BioSpace chronicles five companies that went public during the pandemic gold rush.
Verve Therapeutics
IPO Date: June 2021
Proceeds: $306.7 million
Arguably the most successful company on this list is Verve Therapeutics, which went public in June 2021, raising nearly $307 million.
Verve entered the industry with a mission to harness gene and base editing for cardiovascular diseases. While the Massachusetts-based biotech no doubt benefited from the pandemic-induced influx of money, it remained true to its identity, even as many peers pivoted to addressing the virus.
In the months leading up to the IPO, Verve worked on its editing technology for lowering LDL cholesterol and a preclinical program for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). Eli Lilly took notice in June 2023, paying $60 million upfront to partner on what would eventually become Verve’s lead asset VERVE-102.
Designed to be a one-time therapy, VERVE-102 is a base editor that disables the PCSK9 gene in the liver to reduce LDL-C levels. These days, VERVE-102 is in Phase Ib development for heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia and ASCVD. A readout in April this year showed that the lowest dose of the therapy lowered LDL-C by 21% on average, while the highest dose hit 53% reduction.
Impressed by VERVE-102’s potential, Lilly went all in on Verve in June, acquiring the biotech for up to $1.3 billion—a 113% premium to the company’s average closing price at the time. The takeover “signals confidence in Verve’s approach and provides global clinical and commercial capabilities,” Rajesh Sharma, associate director of Forecasting and Analytics at DelveInsight, told BioSpace in an email.
Alongside VERVE-102, the pharma will also get Verve’s other clinical asset, VERVE-201, which targets the ANGPTL3 gene to treat homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia and refractory hypercholesterolemia.
“Verve has largely delivered on its IPO promise in terms of science and platform execution,” Sharma said. “Verve demonstrates one of the most successful trajectories from the 2021 IPO wave.”
Caribou Biosciences
IPO Date: July 2021
Proceeds: $304 million
California’s Caribou Biosciences made a lot of money in 2021. In March of that year, the biotech brought in $115 million in series C proceeds for its pipeline of CAR T therapies and next-generation CRISPR platform.
Then in July, Caribou announced its Nasdaq run and debuted on the public stock market after raising $304 million.
Much of the excitement surrounding Caribou was driven by the big names attached to the biotech. Caribou was co-founded by CRISPR trailblazer Jennifer Doudna, who in October 2020 won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Then, in February 2021, pharma powerhouse AbbVie fronted $40 million to leverage the biotech’s genome editing platform and advance two next-generation CAR T therapies.
AbbVie, which participated as a new backer in Caribou’s series C, also promised up to $300 million in development, regulatory and launch milestones, plus global tiered royalties.
But the years since have been challenging for Caribou. In September 2023, AbbVie turned its back on the CAR T specialist, citing strategic reasons. Less than a year later, in July 2024, Caribou was searching for ways to push its runway into the second half of 2026 and settled on a 12% workforce reduction as well as the discontinuation of all preclinical work related to its CAR natural killer (NK) cell programs.
Caribou also pivoted from oncology to autoimmune diseases in September 2024, after its lead asset CB-010 won the FDA’s fast track designation for systemic lupus erythematosus. But immunology would not work out for Caribou either, forcing the biotech in April this year to return to its oncology origins—and lay off 32% in the process.
As of June 30, 2025, Caribou had $183.9 million in cash, equivalents and marketable securities, enough to keep going into the second half of 2027.
Amylyx
IPO Date: January 2022
Proceeds: $190 million
Although Amylyx didn’t go public until early 2022, the company first announced plans late in the golden year of 2021. At the time, everyone had their eyes on its amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) therapy AMX0035, an application for which the FDA had just accepted and granted priority review. The Massachusetts biotech grossed around $190 million from its IPO.
In September that year—after initially narrowly losing and then winning an advisory committee vote—AMX0035 won the regulator’s approval for ALS and entered the U.S. market as Relyvrio. The drug was cleared under the FDA’s accelerated pathway, meaning that it needed to succeed in a Phase III confirmatory study to validate its clinical benefit.
This study, dubbed PHOENIX, enrolled more than 660 patients and compared Relyvrio against placebo in improving disease severity. PHOENIX failed in March 2024. One month later, Amylyx withdrew Relyvrio from the market.
Joe Thorne, analyst at TD Cowen, called this turn of events “disappointing” in an email to BioSpace, nevertheless saying that Amylyx has since “reinvented itself.”
Indeed, in July 2024, just months after losing its only marketed product, Amylyx pivoted to the metabolic disease space and picked up a GLP-1 receptor antagonist—not an agonist like Novo Nordisk’s blockbuster drug semaglutide—from Eiger BioPharmaceuticals for $35 million.
The drug, now called avexitide, is being tested for post-bariatric hypoglycemia, a common complication that arises in patients who have undergone bariatric surgery. A Phase III study in this indication is set to complete enrollment early next year with a topline readout expected in the third quarter of 2026. Avexitide is also in mid-stage development for congenital hyperinsulinism.
“The main driver of value currently is not the same as” what it was at the time of Its IPO, Thome continued, noting that avexitide is now “the main focus for the company and investors.”
Invivyd
IPO Date: August 2021
Proceeds: $355.8 million
Of all the companies on this list, Invivyd most directly benefited from the influx of pandemic cash, with its $336 million series C in April 2021 promising to fund the development of ADG20, the biotech’s lead candidate being tested for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19.
In August that year, the company set its sights on the public stock market, eventually raising $355.8 million—the largest IPO haul on this list—likewise largely to bankroll ADG20’s clinical studies, as well as lay the foundation for its manufacturing and commercialization.
“The company went public during the pandemic with high expectations around broadly neutralizing COVID-19 antibodies,” Sneha Sharma, lead associate at DelveInsight told BioSpace, but these expectations “were challenged almost immediately.”
In December 2021, in vitro data indicated that ADG20 was 300-fold weaker against the COVID-19 Omicron variant, which at the time was the emerging strain of concern. The readout wiped about 80% of Invivyd’s market value off the mapand would spawn a class action lawsuit against the biotech in 2023. In April 2022, Invivyd decided to hold off on filing an emergency use application for ADG20.
Soon after rebranding to Invivyd in September 2022, the biotech pivoted its pipeline to VYD222, another COVID-19 monoclonal antibody. This asset fared better, with a Phase III readout in December 2023 showing high serum titers of neutralizing antibodies in immunocompromised patients.
The FDA granted the drug, branded Pemgarda, emergency use authorization for the pre-exposure prophylaxis of COVID-19 in March 2024. Invivyd has yet to secure full approval for Pemgarda.
Invivyd has since remade itself into a post-pandemic player in the antiviral market, Sharma said, pointing to its next-generation antibody, called VYD2311, designed to neutralize post-Omicron COVID-19 variants. The company in September last year launched a Phase I study for the drug.
Invivyd has also recently announced a $125 million public offering, which Sharma said “has significantly strengthened the balance sheet.” Still, “the commercial runway for COVID antibodies remains structurally limited”—and this will inevitably impact the biotech, she added. Invivyd’s long-term success will depend on a “pivot to broader respiratory threats like RSV and measles,” Sharma said.
Metagenomi
IPO Date: February 2024
Proceeds: $93.8 million
Capping off this list is an outlier. While all other companies here went public during the peak of the pandemic boom, Metagenomi caught the tail end of the IPO rush. The California biotech launched its Nasdaq bid in early 2024, winning just under $94 million in proceeds. Shortly after, the IPO window snapped shut.
“Metagenomi was one of the companies that went public with a pre-clinical pipeline,” TD Cowen’s Thome told BioSpace in an email. It did so on the basis of its “exciting” gene editing platform, he added, which caught the attention of some of the industry’s biggest names. In late 2020, Bayer led the biotech’s $65 million series A round, while Moderna in 2021 partnered with the startup to advance in vivo therapies for genetic diseases.
Both Bayer and Moderna then co-led Metagenomi’s series B round in 2023, bringing in $275 million for the biotech.
But the public markets have been hard on Metagenomi, which still does not have a candidate in the clinic. The company’s stock has fallen some 85% since its February 2024 debut. The company’s shares were trading at $1.60 apiece as of Dec. 2, nearly one-tenth of its $15-per-share IPO price.
Despite this steep drop in value, Thome still believes that Metagenomi “has delivered on what it set out to do at the time of the IPO,” which is to advance a genome editing toolbox that can be used to develop curative therapies.
“Investors knew that they had to wait for clinical validation of the gene editing technology,” Thome said.
Metagenomi is making progress, according to Thome, with the goal of entering the clinic next year. Last month, the biotech laid off 25% of its workforce and replaced its CEO—a strategic restructuring initiative that would provide more resources to drive the hemophilia A candidate MGX-001 forward and extend its cash runway into the fourth quarter of 2027.
This move, Thome added, will help Metagenomi to “prioritize cash and focus on the most promising programs,” and give the company more leeway “to bring those programs to an inflection point.”
At the end of the third quarter, Metagenomi had $184.1 million in cash, equivalents and marketable securities.
