69 Best Pharmaceutical Research Startups to Watch in 2026

The Definitive Seedtable Ranking of Pharmaceutical Research Startups

We track 71,000+ companies and rank them dynamically using our Seedtable Score – a score that uses quantitative and qualitative data points to signal the momentum behind a company. We then monitor the list manually leveraging our expertise as founders and investors.

There are 1,848 start-ups with an aggregate funding of $190.3b. The average funding per company in this subset is $2.8b.

Last update to the database: Mar 31, 2026. See changelog.

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10

Funding Rounds

$176.5b

Money raised

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment platform.

Location:

Key people:

15

Funding Rounds

$140.4m

Money raised

Synthace is a software company based out of London, UK, building automation software that gives biologists the ability to control and analyze the performance of lab hardware.

3

Funding Rounds

$17.5m

Money raised

Numerai is a hedge fund with stock market trades determined by crowdsourced artificial intelligence models. The best models receive rewards in the form of a cryptographic token called Numeraire (NMR) on the Ethereum blockchain.

1

Funding Rounds

$60.0m

Money raised

1

Funding Rounds

$50.0k

Money raised

Pembient uses advances in biotechnology to fabricate horn and other wildlife products to combat the threat to endangered species.

5

Funding Rounds

$236.7m

Money raised

A genetic medicine company that build data platforms using synthetic biology, artificial intelligence and genetic medicine for the development of medical therapies.

Key people:

9

Funding Rounds

$3.9m

Money raised

Charles River Analytics is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based R&D solutions provider in 1983.

8

Funding Rounds

$406.4m

Money raised

Bolt Threads is a biotechnology company that makes high performance fabrics and materials using biology.

5

Funding Rounds

$5.1m

Money raised

Indee Labs focuses on the development of microfluidic vortex shedding for rapidly and efficiently transfecting human primary immune cells with negligible perturbation. The team is focused on developing its core technology for short turnaround chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) development and manufacturing.

Location:

Key people:

10

Funding Rounds

$269.5m

Money raised

Rigetti Computing is a quantum computing company based in Berkeley, California.

7

Funding Rounds

$254.1m

Money raised

Owkin is a medical treatment and therapeutics company founded by Thomas Clozel. They develop artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to augment and develop medical and biological research.

Location:

Key people:

8

Funding Rounds

$479.3m

Money raised

Insilico Medicine is a drug discovery, artificial intelligence company that looks to treat cancer and age related diseases

Location:

Key people:

2

Funding Rounds

$65.3m

Money raised

Leo Cancer Care is a company developing upright radiotherapy solutions.

2

Funding Rounds

Hypergiant Industries is a machine learning and artificial intelligence company offering client-focused services and research and development in various fields. The company was founded by Ben Lamm and John Fremont in 2018.

9

Funding Rounds

$3.9m

Money raised

Toyon Research Corporation is a Goleta, California-based company that researches and develops radio frequency and antenna systems that was founded in 1980.

4

Funding Rounds

$1.8b

Money raised

Grail is a biotechnology company headquartered in Menlo Park, California that was founded as a spinoff of Illumina Inc and initially headed by Jeffrey Huber in 2016, focused on making a medical device that can detect early stage cancer.

6

Funding Rounds

$3.0b

Money raised

Commonwealth Fusion Systems is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based research and development company developing fusion power systems based on ARC tokamak reactors.

3

Funding Rounds

$5.9m

Money raised

Lucigen is a biotechnology company offering research and testing products and services to life science professionals. The company was founded in 1998, and is headquartered in Middleton, Wisconsin.

5

Funding Rounds

$76.5m

Money raised

A clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company engaging in drug discovery and drug development for treating autoimmune disease and cancer.

4

Funding Rounds

$92.0m

Money raised

Forethought is a San Francisco-based company providing customer service automation using generative AI technology.

Key people:

4

Funding Rounds

$51.0m

Money raised

Adarga is a UK-based artificial intelligence software provider working with customers across defense, national security, and commercial organizations.

8

Funding Rounds

$71.3m

Money raised

Notable Labs is a company providing personalized drug combination testing service for cancer patients.

1

Funding Rounds

$14.5m

Money raised

CasperLabs is a Zug-based company and blockchain platform founded in 2018 by Mrinal Manohar, Clifford Sarkin and Medha Parlikar.

Location:

Zug

Key people:

6

Funding Rounds

$1.6b

Money raised

Stoke Space is a company manufacturing space vehicle components and performing scientific and technological services associated with the space industry.

2

Funding Rounds

$158.0m

Money raised

Senti Biosciences is a synthetic biology company.

5

Funding Rounds

$43.9m

Money raised

Via Separations is a Watertown, Massachusetts-based company founded in 2016 by Shreya Dave.

Key people:

10

Funding Rounds

$635.4m

Money raised

Genomatica is a San Diego-based company founded in 2000 by Christophe Schilling.

Location:

Key people:

6

Funding Rounds

$83.3m

Money raised

BenchSci is a biotechnology company with a machine learning platform for researching biological compounds. It was founded in 2015 and is located in Toronto, Canada.

Location:

Key people:

2

Funding Rounds

$16.8m

Money raised

Orbit Discovery offers a DNA-encoded peptide display technology to identify potential peptide drugs for a range of chronic diseases.

Industries:

Key people:

6

Funding Rounds

$468.1m

Money raised

HistoSonics is a venture-backed medical device start-up company developing a non-invasive sonic beam therapy platform and procedure using the science of histotripsy. Histotripsy utilizes the pressure created by focused sound energy to liquify and destroy targeted tissue, including diseased tissue and tumors, at sub-cellular levels.

7

Funding Rounds

$99.0m

Money raised

NOCD provides online therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

4

Funding Rounds

$49.6m

Money raised

Inato matches the right sites to the right clinical research study, globally.

Location:

Key people:

10

Funding Rounds

$410.0m

Money raised

Paige provides AI-based digital diagnostics and a vendor-neutral platform designed to drive diagnostic confidence and a more productive pathology workflow.

5

Funding Rounds

$28.9m

Money raised

Antidote.me closes the gap between clinical trials and patients

13

Funding Rounds

$386.6m

Money raised

A biotechnology company that develops medicines based on live bacterial consortia that can colonize the human intestine.

3

Funding Rounds

$21.5m

Money raised

RoosterBio is a biotechnology company located in Frederick, Maryland, founded by Jon Rowley in 2013 providing standardized stem cell products for R&D, clinical, and commercial use in the regenerative medicine industry.

11

Funding Rounds

$50.0m

Money raised

An industrial biotech company developing a commercial bioprocess for manufacturing bio-based malonic acid.

6

Funding Rounds

$88.0m

Money raised

Prellis Biologics is developing technology to build transplantable human organs and tissues.

Location:

Key people:

1

Funding Rounds

$24.1m

Money raised

Neos Therapeutics is a pharmaceutical company developing ADHD medications founded in 2008.

3

Funding Rounds

$145.0m

Money raised

Cala Health offers bioelectronic medicines, medical devices, and neurotherapeutics for managing chronic health conditions.

Key people:

6

Funding Rounds

$190.5m

Money raised

Kuur Therapeutics focuses on the development of CAR-NKT cell therapies platform for applications in cancer treatment.

8

Funding Rounds

$117.5m

Money raised

Locus Biosciences is a biotechnology company developing CRISPR-Cas3-engineered precision antibacterial products.

Key people:

10

Funding Rounds

$87.6m

Money raised

Eligo Bioscience is a developer of novel genetic medicines founded in 2014 by Timothy Lu, Xavier Duportet, Luciano Marraffini and David Bikard.

Location:

Key people:

4

Funding Rounds

$76.3m

Money raised

AiCure is an advanced data analytics company that uses artificial intelligence to understand how patients respond to treatments.

Key people:

2

Funding Rounds

$15.6m

Money raised

Iris.ai is a Stabekk-headquartered artificial intelligence company developing tools and applications allowing users to research open-access research papers.

1

Funding Rounds

$2.6m

Money raised

Healthera is a provider of a patient experience platform founded in 2015 by Quintus Liu.

Location:

Key people:

5

Funding Rounds

$103.1m

Money raised

Promethera Biosciences is a biotechnology company developing regenerative medicine treatments for liver diseases.

6

Funding Rounds

$15.8m

Money raised

Massive Bio is a New York-based company founded by Selin Kurnaz, Dr. Arturo Loaiza-Bonilla and Cagatay M. Culcuoglu, offering precision oncology services to cancer patients, providers, and pharmaceutical companies.

2

Funding Rounds

$13.8m

Money raised

A biopharmaceutical company developing therapeutics to attack cancer stem cells.

9

Funding Rounds

$411.9m

Money raised

Benchling is a company based in San Francisco focusing on life science collaboration, both private and public, through creating cloud based software tools for digital DNA sequence editing, designing and running experiments, analyzing data, and sharing research.

Industries:

Location:

Key people:

3

Funding Rounds

$32.0m

Money raised

miRagen is a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative microRNA-targeting therapies to improve human health.

Key people:

6

Funding Rounds

$4.6m

Money raised

Nanomedicine company developing vaccines and therapies with cell-specific targeting.

3

Funding Rounds

$107.0m

Money raised

Drift is a software company offering a conversational marketing platform founded in 2015 by David Cancel.

6

Funding Rounds

$86.6m

Money raised

Prokarium is a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing vaccination and cancer immunotherapy solutions based on synthetic biology.

Location:

Key people:

3

Funding Rounds

$54.1k

Money raised

ApexQubit is a biotechnology company that is harnessing a proprietary technology for discovery of new medicines to treat patients with undruggable diseases.

14

Funding Rounds

$87.2m

Money raised

A medical company in Massachusetts focusing on lowering the cost of vaccine distribution.

Location:

Key people:

3

Funding Rounds

$143.4m

Money raised

An exosome therapeutics company founded in 2016 and based in Oxford, UK, that uses exosomes to deliver small and large molecule therapeutics. The company has a proprietary technology to modify exosomes to target specific organs such as the brain and central nervous system.

Key people:

5

Funding Rounds

$57.1m

Money raised

Metabolon is a company developing metabolomics analytical methods and software for biomarker discovery

2

Funding Rounds

$4.5m

Money raised

Cellink AB is a biotechnology research company based in Gothenburg.

8

Funding Rounds

$92.7m

Money raised

Develops medicines for patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease and other neurological disorders.

3

Funding Rounds

$31.2m

Money raised

Deep Lens is an Artificial Intelligence company matching patients with clinical trials.

Industries:

Key people:

3

Funding Rounds

$280.0m

Money raised

A therapeutics company founded in 2016 working in drug discovery and development using fungi. LifeMine uses genomics approaches to search for biosynthetic genes in eukaryotic microbes for the discovery of naturally inspired drugs to treat previously untreatable and significant chronic diseases.

Key people:

3

Funding Rounds

$153.0m

Money raised

Antheia is an American biotechnology company founded in 2013, and is located in Menlo Park, California. Antheia uses synthetic biology, informatics, and fermentation technologies to produce plant based medicines; most notably opioids using yeast.

5

Funding Rounds

$155.6m

Money raised

Athelas is a company developing blood testing device that utilizes deep learning and computer vision.

3

Funding Rounds

Clinithink is a Natural Language Processing AI for structuring medical chart notations

3

Funding Rounds

$34.0m

Money raised

Deep 6 AI is an artificial Intelligence company founded by Wout Brusselaers.

Key people:

7

Funding Rounds

$24.0m

Money raised

Headset is a tech company providing an IT solution for the cannabis industry.

Key people:

2

Funding Rounds

$50.3m

Money raised

Lung Therapeutics is a therapeutics for lung injury and disease company founded in 2013 by Andrew Mazar, Steven Idell and Sreerama Shetty.

2

Funding Rounds

$18.1m

Money raised

A biotechnology company that develops treatments for cancer and hematologic conditions

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