Ben Zercher is a Senior Analyst at PitchBook covering biotech & pharma.
Parabilis Medicines just broke the record for the largest venture-backed biotech IPO, only weeks after Kailera Therapeutics took the crown. Shares of the cancer biotech company closed their first day of trading at $31.60—58% above the IPO price of $20 per share. The company raised gross proceeds of around $670 million.
Unlike Kailera, which was formed in 2024 and quickly stockpiled private capital before going public, Parabilis took a longer and far less linear road.
Founded as FogPharma in 2017, Parabilis raised six venture rounds. Its valuation fluctuated through a rebrand, leadership turnover, and the post-pandemic biotech winter. Parabilis’ lead drug candidate, zolucatetide, boosted the company’s momentum last year. This engineered peptide is designed to shut off a faulty signal that tells certain rare tumors to keep growing, and holds the potential to treat other cancers.
After an FDA Fast Track designation in late 2025, Parabilis raised a $305 million Series F round in January this year. An Orphan Drug designation and Regeneron collaboration laid further groundwork for the record IPO, which debuted on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.
The biotech IPO window is open again, and the rush of deals isn’t hype. It’s a backlog of strong companies that kept building through the funding downturn and are now finally going public.
While the pandemic-era class sold preclinical promises, Parabilis and its 2026 peers have real clinical programs behind them.
This article originally appeared on PitchBook News
