Early-stage financing rounds are on track to hit their lowest dollar value in years as funders continue to eschew risky investments, experts told BioSpace.
In the first half of 2026, the major theme across biopharma is what Mike Nelson calls “selective recovery.”
There has been a notable rebound in capital markets, said the partner at law firm Cooley, as demonstrated by the uptick in financing volume. Initial public offerings have also surged. According to BioSpace’s tally, 18 biotechs have gone public since the start of the year, compared with only eight for the whole of 2025.
“But investment remains concentrated in later-stage, de-risked assets with near-term clinical catalysts over early-stage companies with less tested therapies,” Nelson said in an email interview. In the first quarter, he noted, later-stage rounds totaled $4.5 billion over 51 deals, “the highest Q1 value in recent years.”
Meanwhile, early-stage financing—covering seed and series A efforts—is “on pace for its lowest annual count since before the pandemic,” Nelson said.
Ben Zercher, senior biotech and pharma analyst at PitchBook, agrees. He concedes that “there were certainly some notable early-stage rounds in the first half of 2026,” with some series A and series B rounds exceeding $100 million. Still, “the series label doesn’t always capture the full picture.”
In fact, Zercher added, PitchBook’s analysis shows that “many of these series A and B megarounds are being raised by companies founded five or more years ago with relatively mature operations and, in some cases, clinical-stage programs.”
Such is the case with Isomorphic Labs, the Alphabet-backed AI startup that in May bagged the industry’s second-biggest raise ever, taking home $2.1 billion in its series B round. Isomorphic was founded in 2021 but hasn’t yet disclosed clinical candidates.
Megarounds like this pull the overall VC funding numbers for H1 2026 up, Robert Stanislaro, senior managing director at FTI Consulting, told BioSpace over email. He cautioned that Isomorphic is but a multibillion and record-breaking exception to the rule—not a signal of what’s to come.
“Investors will write early checks when the science is unusually strong, the syndicate is high-quality, or the path to a near-term catalyst is credible,” Stanislaro said. “Investors are recalibrating their measures of confidence, not expanding their tolerance for risk.”
In that vein, however, there are clear winners in H1 2026. Biologics and antibodies “have attracted notable investor interest,” as have DNA- and RNA-focused therapies, according to Stanislaro. “This trend reflects a bigger picture: capital hasn’t dried up, but it has become far more discerning about where it goes.”
Here, BioSpace picks apart that flow of VC money, looking at the five biggest raises of H1 2026.
Isomorphic Labs
Date: May 12
Round: Series B
Raise: $2.1 billion
Topping the fundraising leaderboards this year—and likely for many years to come—is Isomorphic Labs, a life sciences venture by Alphabet, the tech giant behind Google.
In May, the London-based biotech brought in an eye-watering $2.1 billion in series B money, the “second largest biotech round of all time,” PitchBook’s Zercher told BioSpace at the time. The biggest biotech fundraise ever belongs to Altos Labs, which launched in January 2022 with $3 billion.
What makes Isomorphic’s feat all the more impressive is that it has yet to disclose a drug candidate. Much of the buzz around the biotech is driven by its impressive tech pedigree—what Zercher called the “DeepMind halo,” referring to Google’s AI agent—and investors’ rapidly growing enthusiasm for the integration of AI in drug development.
“One of the defining themes of H1 2026 has been investor preference for platform technologies over single-asset companies,” Sharad Chandra Vinayak, assistant project manager for Pharma Insights at DelveInsight, told BioSpace in an email.
Isomorphic is the best example of this theme, he continued, and the biotech’s massive “landmark” raise “reflects growing conviction that AI-enabled drug discovery can fundamentally improve pharmaceutical R&D productivity, accelerate development timelines, and increase the probability of success.”
Isomorphic’s platform is built around the AlphaFold family of models, designed to accurately predict the structures of DNA, RNA and protein molecules, as well as their interactions. AlphaFold—which Isomorphic in May 2024 said “is the most accurate tool in the world for predicting how proteins interact with other molecules throughout the cell”—won a 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Isomorphic is leveraging this platform to develop a pipeline “focused in oncology and immunology,” according to its website, though as of writing, the company has yet to name any clinical candidates. The series B could help fill this gap, with Isomorphic earmarking the money for “accelerating and expanding its pipeline of therapeutic programs toward the clinic,” as well as continuing to develop its drug design technology.
NewLimit
Date: June 3
Round: Series C
Raise: $435 million
Far behind Isomorphic is the California startup NewLimit, which is working on “reprogramming” the epigenome—the collection of chemical modifications that modulate gene expression without directly altering the DNA sequence itself—to tackle aging.
Early last month, the biotech brought in $435 million in series C money, which will go toward its pipeline of medicines that “restore youthful function in old cells,” according to a company blog at the time. Like Isomorphic, NewLimit has yet to reach the clinic, though it is not far off.
NewLimit’s lead asset is NLMT1001, an mRNA-based therapeutic designed to turn back the clock on old liver cells, restoring youthful function to the organ, according to the company’s website. The company plans to start clinical trials next year. NewLimit is also working on a few other programs, all of which are in the very early stages of development.
Another point of similarity with Isomorphic, which also potentially explains investors’ enthusiasm for NewLimit, is its heavy reliance on AI for drug design. The California company has developed a proprietary model called Ambrosia, which “builds atop foundation models of nature’s languages and human languages” to design therapies that can counter aging in cells, according to the NewLimit website.
Beeline Medicines
Date: April 15
Round: Series A
Raise: $426.3 million
In the first half of the year, immunology also emerged as “one of the fastest-growing areas of investment,” DelveInsight’s Vinayak told BioSpace.
“Advances in disease biology, biomarker identification, and patient stratification are enabling more targeted approaches to autoimmune, inflammatory, and fibrotic diseases,” he explained.
Riding this tailwind is Beeline Medicines, which emerged from stealth in April with $300 million in starting funds thanks to Bain Capital and five immuno assets from Bristol Myers Squibb. Leading the startup’s portfolio is afimetoran, a small-molecule inhibitor of TLR7 and TLR8, which are endosomal receptors that help drive the inflammatory response.
On the last day of June, Beeline added $126.3 million to the series A haul with fresh infusions from Bain, BMS and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
By selectively blocking these proteins, afimetoran suppresses the inflammation cascade and dampens the activation of immune cells, according to Beeline’s website. Afimetoran is being developed for systemic (SLE) and cutaneous (CLE) lupus erythematosus. Also on Beeline’s pipeline is the fusion protein BLN-326, which combines IL-2 and CD25 to “unlock the therapeutic potential of regulatory T cell biology,” the biotech said. The asset is being tested for CLE, SLE and atopic dermatitis.
Much of Beeline’s series A has been earmarked for afimetoran. Still, CEO Saqib Islam in April said any leftover money would go toward “several additional clinical trials” over the next 12 months.
Parabilis Medicines
Date: January 8
Round: Series F
Raise: $305 million
One of the earliest signs of some market recovery this year came from Parabilis Medicines, which in early January bagged $305 million in a rare series F raise. Half a year later, the haul remains among 2026’s largest.
Parabilis’ lead asset is zolucatetide, an investigational peptide therapy produced through the biotech’s Helicon platform, which uses AI- and physics-based modeling to design drug candidates that have the target precision of antibodies while still being able to permeate cells like small molecules.
Zolucatetide is designed to target and directly inhibit the β-catenin:T-cell factor transcription complex, a “key downstream node” in central cancer cascades, according to Parabilis’ website.
Parabilis’ raise, Vinayak told BioSpace, underscores how cancer “remains the largest recipient of venture investment,” which he explained is driven largely by an attractive market opportunity, continuous scientific innovation in the space and established regulatory pathways.
The series F proceeds, Parabilis said in January, will help push the asset into registrational development for desmoid tumors, as well as continued evaluation in other cancers, such as hepatocellular carcinoma and colorectal cancer. Some of the money was also funneled toward further building out Parabilis’ pipeline, with a focus on disease targets that had long been considered “undruggable.”
Last month, Parabilis got a massive vote of confidence for its Helicon technology with a history-making initial public offering. Parabilis brought in $670 million in proceeds, the biggest IPO in biopharma history, topping Kailera Therapeutics’ previous record raise just over a month earlier of $625 million.
Like the series F money, Parabilis will put much of the IPO haul behind zolucatetide, according to regulatory filings submitted in the leadup to the public debut. The biotech now trades on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol PBLS.
Corxel Pharmaceuticals
Date: January 23
Round: Series D1
Raise: $287 million
Riding the cresting weight-loss wave is Corxel Pharmaceuticals. In late January, the New Jersey biotech added $287 million in series D1 money—funds to help bankroll the development of lead asset CX11.
“The commercial success of obesity and diabetes therapies has fundamentally reshaped investor perceptions of metabolic disease markets,” Vinayak said in an email, noting that Corxel is emblematic of this trend.
Designed to be taken as a daily pill, CX11 is a small-molecule drug that activates the GLP-1 receptor—currently the most dominant target for obesity medications. This class of drugs has been shown to improve blood sugar control, suppress appetite and, crucially, help patients lose weight.
In December 2024, Corxel entered the GLP-1 arena with the acquisition of ex-China rights to CX11 from Shanghai-based Vincentage. Last month, the New Jersey biotech posted Phase 2 data for CX11 touting weight reduction of up to 11.5% at 36 weeks, with no signs of plateauing.
Corxel’s series B will help push CX11 through the Phase 2 study in obesity, as well as launch a mid-stage study in type 2 diabetes mellitus, the company said in January. The money will also fund Corxel’s initial preparations for late-stage development.
More broadly, the hefty placement in Corxel points to the cardiometabolic sector’s “significant commercial potential,” Vinayak said, “and the expectation that demand for effective obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular therapies will remain a major growth driver for the biopharma industry.”
