Analysis
Lycia Therapeutics priced its upsized IPO at $18.00 a share this week, selling 17.64 million shares for about $317.5 million -- a sign, as Pulse has covered, that clinical-stage biotechs can still find a receptive public market when a deal is sized right. Nasdaq-listed Zai Lab raised roughly $250 million in a PIPE the same week, selling 11.34 million shares at $22.04 each to fund its DLL3-targeting cancer drug. Both deals landed in a market that, on paper, looks nervous about pricing risk, per Value Add Pulse's tracking.
That nervousness shows up elsewhere in how much harder AI mega-caps are to price against biotech's cleaner catalysts:
“- OpenAI -- reset its own valuation to $1.25T, down from an earlier $1.4T report, around the same time.”
- Anthropic -- leaked prospectus reportedly shows $4.6B in 2025 revenue against a $42B net loss and $518B in decade-long infrastructure commitments, while still targeting a valuation up to $2T, more than double its last private mark of $965B.
- OpenAI -- reset its own valuation to $1.25T, down from an earlier $1.4T report, around the same time.
The split is instructive. Biotech IPOs and PIPEs are priced against near-term clinical catalysts -- Lycia's and Zai Lab's investors will get trial or regulatory news within quarters, giving the market a fast way to confirm or correct the price. AI mega-IPOs like Anthropic's are priced against total addressable market and multi-decade infrastructure bets that won't resolve for years, which is a much harder number for any banker to underwrite and a much easier one for sentiment to swing against. Deal volume is healthy in both lanes right now; the repricing risk sits in how long investors have to wait to find out if they were right.