In 2021, 104 biotech companies went public on US exchanges. In 2025, 11 did. That is a drop of almost 90%, and 2025 was lower than either of the two years usually called the trough, 2022 and 2023.

For a sector that relies on public markets to fund late-stage trials, that is not a small change.

How far did the IPO count fall?

Source: IQVIA Institute via Fierce Biotech (2020, 2021, 2024, 2025); FLG Partners (2022, 2023). Two sources are combined. Both give 24 for 2024, which is the only year they overlap in our data.

View data

year	ipos
2020	79
2021	104
2022	18
2023	17
2024	24
2025	11

The sequence has three phases. In 2020 and 2021, 79 and 104 companies listed, the busiest two years in the series. In 2022 and 2023 the count dropped to 18 and 17. In 2024 it recovered slightly, to 24, which looked like the start of a reopening. Then 2025 fell to 11, a 55% decline from 2024.

The money tells the same story. IQVIA reports that IPOs raised $3 billion in 2025, the lowest in ten years and below the $4 billion raised in 2023.

What does a closed window do?

An IPO is how many biotech investors get paid. Venture funds that back a company in its early years usually hope to sell shares to the public once the drug has data. When that exit is blocked, two things tend to happen: companies stay private longer, and investors have less money to put into the next round of companies.

We can see the first effect in the numbers, because 2025 venture funding of $33.8 billion was spread across more deals than in 2021 (see our funding analysis). We cannot see the second one directly in this data. It is an inference, and the sector has several other forces acting on it, including interest rates.

Sources

1. Fierce Biotech, Biopharma funding dropped 20% in 2025 as companies doubled down on big bets: IQVIA: IPO counts of 79 (2020), 104 (2021), 24 (2024) and 11 (2025), and proceeds of $3 billion (2025) and $4 billion (2023). Underlying report: IQVIA Institute, Global R&D Trends 2026.
2. FLG Partners, The 2025 BioPharma & MedTech IPO Landscape: US-only counts of 18 (2022), 17 (2023) and 24 (2024), and global counts of 95, 88 and 73.