Over two weeks late last month, private biopharma money went to two places: the very top and the very bottom, with a conspicuous hole in the middle. That hole is today's story.
Picture the ladder a private drug developer climbs to fund itself: a small seed or series A to get moving, a mid-sized round to bridge into growth, then the mega-rounds that carry a late-stage story toward market. Across those two weeks, the top of that ladder was crowded and the bottom was busy. The middle rung had almost no one on it.
Mentari Therapeutics raised $200m, Crystalys Therapeutics closed a $130m Series B and Claris Biotherapeutics revealed a $118m Series B. After those three, the next-largest venture round was Transcripta Bio's $24m series A. In between, in the $50m to $100m band that once carried companies from early proof to a growth story, there was nothing: not a single mid-sized round across the two-week window to July 30.
Scrip's read of second-quarter venture data from 2020 to 2026 lays out the shift. Rounds of $100m or more climbed from 45.4% of all VC rounds to 65.8%. Rounds under $50m slipped from 22.3% to 16.6%. The $50m to $100m middle fell hardest, from 32.3% to 17.6%, a drop of nearly half. The pattern fits an industry still climbing out of the hard capital markets of 2022 to 2025.
Mentari: The Side Door To Public Markets
Mentari, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, is not a conventional raise. The migraine drug developer is going public through a reverse merger with InMed Pharmaceuticals, a deal the two announced in May that will list the combined company via InMed and pull in $290m through a concurrent PIPE.