Just nine drug developers went public in the US during the first quarter of last year, but with the industry boosted by pandemic response, 32 biopharma companies launched IPOs in Q1 of this year.

Tempest goes public via a reverse merger with Millendo. Takeda inks its ninth deal of 2021, a discovery pact with BridGene around its chemoproteomics technology.

Private Company Edition: Venture capital mega-rounds continue a brisk pace with machine learning-based drug discovery firm insitro and gene therapy developer Graphite Bio among recent $100m-plus deals. Also, Argobio raised €50m to fund five start-ups in Europe. 

Public Company Edition: US initial public offerings are reawakening from a brief nap as Prometheus and Longboard prepare IPOs for launch. Also, Halozyme sells $700m worth of notes and Karuna’s $250m stock sale leads recent follow-on offerings.