A 32-year look at biotech’s capital expansion

The surge in biotech financing during the COVID era was not a one-off event, but part of a longer-term expansion in the sector’s access to capital, driven in part by the growth of specialist investors that build companies and recycle gains back into biotech.

An analysis of aggregate equity capital raised by biotechs globally over the past 32 years shows how dramatic that expansion has been. BioCentury’s BCIQ database has tracked biotech financings since 1994, and through year-end 2025, biotechs had raised a cumulative total of nearly $1.2 trillion across venture, IPO, follow-on and other public equity financings...