Investors are apparently taking bets on when Revolution will be acquired. A handful of pharmas could be interested as Merck backs off.
Suddenly, everyone wants in on the revolution—the RAS-addicted cancer biotech, that is.
Merck, allegedly AbbVie, and potentially other pharmas have apparently been in talks to acquire Revolution Medicines in recent months, according to multiple outlets. Merck, the company seemingly most likely to make the purchase, dropped out of a possible deal after talks failed to land on a final price, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal. An earlier report from The Financial Times suggested that Merck had been seeking a price of $28 billion to $32 billion.
That Revolution walked away is indicative of management’s confidence in the pipeline, according to Truist Securities.
“In our view, given a potential transaction in the $30 billion range was reportedly being discussed is a nice validation of RVMD’s value and could be a good watermark for other potential suitors to consider,” Truist wrote in a note to investors Monday morning. “We continue to believe that RVMD is well funded and doesn’t need to do a deal.”
The news that Merck was out sent Revolution’s shares sliding 16% on Monday morning to $97.91.
But still, the buyout rumors have continued churning. As William Blair noted last week: “some [investors are] even placing side bets on how many weeks it will be until Revolution Medicines could be acquired.”
Revolution CEO Mark Goldsmith declined to discuss the buyout rumors at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference earlier this month.
“But with regard to what are we building, it’s not our goal to build something big,” Goldsmith said. “It’s our goal to build something that’s impactful.”
Why Merck Wants Revolution
Revolution has been around for more than a decade, launching in 2015 with $45 million and a mission to synthesize natural products to find new molecules. From there, the company refined the plan to focus on RAS(ON) inhibitors, with a first wave of products racking up clinical wins in recent years. In September 2025, lead asset daraxonrasib achieved a 29% confirmed objective response rate as a second-line treatment option for patients with pancreatic cancer who have RAS mutations. In the first-line setting, the therapy achieved a 47% ORR.
The FDA took notice too, handing out a Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher in October 2025 that could shorten daraxonrasib’s review time to one to two months.
But Revolution has more in the hopper. Truist analysts wondered if management balked at Merck’s offer because they had gotten a glimpse of data from an upcoming Phase III trial of daraxonrasib called RASolute-302 in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Topline results from that test are expected in the first half of this year. The therapy is also in some earlier-stage trials for lung cancer.
Besides daraxonrasib, Revolution is developing elironrasib, a RAS(ON) G12C-selective inhibitor for solid tumors.
Then there’s zoldonrasib, which is in the busy KRAS G12D solid tumor space. Goldsmith said that Revolution has risen to the top because the asset has shown to be “analogous to placebo” on tolerability. The therapy has also been tested in a larger group of patients than the other investigational agents out there, with trials underway in lung cancer. “So we have a much more mature view of how it behaves,” Goldsmith said.
But Revolution’s G12C drug elironrasib is where Merck may have run into trouble closing the deal. The pharma is currently testing a KRAS G12C drug called MK-1084 in Phase III studies, which is much more advanced than Revolution’s offering, which is only in a Phase I trial. The overlap means that the Federal Trade Commission could have balked and required Merck to divest MK-1084 or another pipeline asset, according to Truist.
“MRK might have had issues paying for an asset that was going to be redundant,” Truist said.
But the pharma does not otherwise have a KRAS pipeline and executives are clearly hungry for deals. “We are not limited from a balance sheet,” CEO Rob Davis said at J.P. Morgan. He said the company could spend “multi tens of billions of dollars.”
That’s thanks to Merck’s massively successful oncology business, particularly Keytruda, according to a January 8 note from BMO Capital Markets covering the Revolution rumors.
“While a deal with MRK appears to be a no-go today, we won’t rule them out from having interest in the future,” Truist said.
Who Else Could Want A Revolution?
Had Merck managed to seal the deal, BMO said it would have marked a return to high-value M&A in the biopharma sector. Companies have mainly been sticking to smaller transactions in the $5 billion to under $20 billion range. At J.P. Morgan, one CEO after another said that was their target range.
But Revolution is still a hot commodity. Truist offered a laundry list of other Big Pharmas that could be interested as Merck backs away. Eli Lilly, Pfizer and Roche are unlikely bets, because all three have similar pan-KRAS inhibitors in their portfolios. To buy Revolution, they would likely have to abandon those assets. That could happen, given that Revolution’s assets could be better than what those companies are holding, Truist believes.
Bristol Myers Squibb, manufacturer of the KRAS G12C therapy Krazati, would make sense as a suitor, according to Truist. That drug, which was picked up from Mirati Therapeutics for $4.8 billion in October 2023, has not proven to be a massive revenue generator, and BMS does not have any further KRAS assets in the pipeline.
Novartis could also be interested, the firm noted, despite being mostly preoccupied with radiopharmaceuticals at the moment. But the Swiss pharma does have other small molecules in its pipeline that would not overlap with Revolution and could prove complimentary, Truist said.
AbbVie was one of the companies rumored to be interested early on. While management has said they are not pursuing such a transaction, Truist has not ruled them out.
