The 552 million pounds ($747 million) raised by British biotechs in the first quarter of the year has been hailed as a “sign of recovery,” although an anticipated resurgence of IPOs across the nation has yet to materialize.
The combined amount raised for the first three months of the year marks an increase on the 466 million pounds ($631 million) accrued in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to the BioIndustry Association (BIA).
“This increase was accompanied by a broader distribution of investment across funding stages, indicating a more active and diversified funding environment for innovative U.K. biotechs at the start of the year,” the industry body said in its quarterly report.
Venture capital into the U.K.’s biotech scene also increased 17% between the quarters—from 442 million pounds ($599 million) to 516 million pounds ($699 million). This gave the BIA hope that a “sustained recovery could be taking hold.”
“It has been an extremely challenging time for biotech—in the U.K. and beyond, small and large,” BIA Managing Director Jane Wall said in the report. “So it comes as great relief to see those green shoots that started showing end of 2025 grow into a more sustained and healthier shift in market dynamics in the first quarter of 2026.”
Comparisons to the year-ago quarter were less flattering, with the first three months of last year seeing 924 million pounds ($1.2 billion) raised by British biotechs. However, the organization warned that last year’s windfall was “heavily influenced by a small number of megadeals.”
“Excluding these, underlying investment levels in Q1 2026 are significantly higher, pointing to a strengthening base of investor activity,” they argued.
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It’s true that the first quarter of 2025 saw British biotechs help set the pace for their equivalents across the globe. The joint-largest biotech fundraise across all countries last year was London-based Isomorphic Labs, which secured a $600 million round in March 2025. Isomorphic builds AI models to design potential drugs, such as the Google DeepMind-partnered AlphaFold 3, which is made to predict molecular structures and interactions.
Meanwhile, Verdiva Bio—also based in London—secured the third-largest biotech raise of 2025 with its $410 million series A in January of last year to fund an obesity pipeline licensed from China’s Sciwind Biosciences.
The fist three months of this year have also seen U.K. biotechs provide tempting targets for Big Pharma acquisition, with Eli Lilly paying $6.3 billion in a front-loaded deal for Cheshire, England-based Centessa Pharmaceuticals and its sleep disorder pipeline, while Amgen penned an $840 million deal for Oxford-based Dark Blue and its preclinical blood disorder pipeline.
“These transactions highlight continued strong international demand for U.K. biotech assets, even as public and private financing conditions remain challenging,” the BIA noted in its report.
However, an anticipated resurgence of British biotech IPOs has yet to come good. Back in January, industry experts told Fierce that U.K.-based drug developers had been exploring whether to go public—including on the ailing London Stock Exchange—but none of this energy has yet transformed into a public listing.
“IPO activity remained stagnant, with no U.K. biotech IPOs recorded in Q1 2026, extending the prolonged period of inactivity in public listings, the BIA observed.
