Drug development is an expensive and risky endeavor. For a fledgling biotechnology company, profitability may be years away, or may never arrive. Therefore, whether a startup can successfully turn science into medicine often depends on its ability to raise capital. This is where venture capitalists step in, investing millions of dollars in exchange for equity in newly formed companies.

Young pharmaceutical companies rely on these private partners to stay afloat until they can reach key milestones, such as entering clinical trials or going public. Over the past two decades, they have received increasing help. The amount of capital flowing into biotechnology has surged, leading to the creation of hundreds of new companies.

Tracking these investments can reveal important patterns, showing how different types of drugs or diseases are favored or neglected by investors. BioPharma Dive built this database to help clarify this big picture.

We focus on 26 venture capital firms that are highly active in creating new drug development companies. In the database below, we have collected funding rounds involving these firms and will update this investment record regularly.

If you notice any omissions or would like to see more information, pleasecontact us to let us know。

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RA Capital, Arch among most active investors in biotech

Number of funding rounds each VC firm participated in per year

Editor's note: The visualizations below compare full-year data from 2022 to 2025, as well as year-to-date data for 2026, and will be updated periodically as more venture rounds are added to the database.

Investment in cell and gene therapy has leveled off

Total venture investment by year for biotech companies developing various types of drugs

Note: Altos Labs, Xaira Therapeutics, and Isomorphic Labs received large investments of $3 billion, $1 billion, and $2 billion, respectively, which account for a significant portion of funding for companies in the "drug discovery" category.

Cancer attracted the majority of investment in 2026

Total venture investment by year for biotech companies developing drugs targeting various diseases

Note: Data for ophthalmology, pulmonary, and infectious diseases are not shown, nor are rounds for companies with undisclosed therapeutic focus or multiple equally prioritized areas.

Investment shifting toward later-stage biotech companies

Total venture investment by year for biotech companies at various clinical trial stages

Later-stage biotech companies receive larger venture investments

Median venture round size by year for biotech companies at various clinical trial stages

Single rounds of $100 million have become common

Median venture round size by year and round type

Note: Some companies announce multiple rounds simultaneously, such as combined Series A and B rounds. Such rounds are not shown in the chart above.

Chart: Julia Himmel/BioPharma Dive

Editor's note: Please search by biotech company or investor name in the text box in the upper left corner. Use the dropdown menus to filter by specific year, round, or investment stage, and sort by round size. Clicking any underlined term in the main database on the right will filter by that term. Click the dropdown arrow on the far right to expand details for each funding round.

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Methodology and limitations:

This database was compiled by BioPharma Dive and includes venture funding rounds for private biotech companies developing human therapeutics. We selected rounds involving at least one of 26 venture capital firms that are highly active and involved in company creation.

The selection of this group of firms was based on a comparison of data from SVB, HSBC, William Blair, and Bay Bridge Bio, which identified the most active biotech venture capital firms in 2023 and 2024 (SVB, HSBC, William Blair), 2022 (SVB), 2021 (SVB), and 2018 to 2023 (Bay Bridge Bio). Investment activity in these lists was defined by the number of funding rounds each firm participated in during the respective year.

We then removed firms that primarily act as "crossover" investors, ultimately identifying 26 venture capital firms.

These 26 core firms are by definition narrow in scope, but their activity provides a meaningful snapshot of industry investment trends. In the future, we plan to expand this initial database by adding more companies that fit our target focus.

This database is also time-limited. We focus on rounds completed and announced on or after January 1, 2022. This covers the period when the biotech industry experienced a downturn after record highs, followed by a recovery. We also plan to add historical data prior to January 1, 2022, in future updates.

For each identified funding round, we collected information on the company's drug development modality, therapeutic area focus, development stage, and lead investors (if not one of the core 26 firms).

We generally use a company's lead program to determine its modality, therapeutic area focus, and development stage at the time of the round. The only exceptions are companies that inherited late-stage candidates but considered earlier-stage candidates as their priority and the reason for fundraising. We classify a company's development stage based on the latest stage that began at the time of financing. Thus, a company raising funds for a Phase 2 trial that has not yet begun would be classified as being at the Phase 1 stage.

The modalities listed are broadly defined and may not precisely describe an individual company's experimental drugs. They were chosen to better illustrate overall trends in investment activity. The "drug discovery" category is intended to represent companies broadly exploring new areas of science rather than focusing on a specific type of drug.

Similarly, therapeutic areas cover a wide range of diseases and, in some cases (such as rare diseases), overlap with other areas. Common diseases that do not fit the listed categories (such as those primarily affecting the heart, lungs, kidneys, and endocrine system) are classified as "Other." When companies identify multiple therapeutic areas of equal priority, we classify them as having "Multiple" therapeutic areas. Those that identify multiple areas but prioritize one are classified under that priority area.

Venture rounds are named relatively consistently, but some companies do not specify whether their round is a seed round or Series A, B, C, etc. In these cases, we classify them as "Undisclosed." Extensions, expansions, or other additional financings of earlier rounds are noted but not classified separately.

Almost all rounds were announced in U.S. dollars. A small number were denominated in euros or other foreign currencies, which we converted to U.S. dollars using exchange rate data from the relevant country's central bank on the date the round was announced.

We organize by the round announcement date, which in some cases may be later than the actual financing if the company initially operated in stealth mode. We do this for consistency and to better match when the round became public.

BioPharma Dive will update this database as rounds meeting the screening criteria are announced, but there may be some delay in adding new rounds.