Sana Biotechnology raises largest-ever IPO for preclinical biotech company
- Dan Primack, author of Axios Pro Rata
Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios
Sana Biotechnology, a Seattle gene regulation startup led by several co-founders of Juno Therapeutics, raised $588 million in its IPO. The company priced 23.5 million shares at $25, for a fully diluted market value of around $4.9 billion.
Why it matters: It's the largest-ever IPO for a preclinical biotech company.
Details: Sana will list on the Nasdaq (SANA). It had raised $865 million in VC funding, including last summer at a $2.8 billion valuation, from firms like Arch Venture Partners (27.5% pre-IPO stake), Flagship Pioneering (21.4%), CPPIB (6.8%) and F-Prime Capital (5.1%).
The bottom line: "The IPO is coming less than three years after it was founded — a milestone that on average usually occurs more than eight years after initial VC financing. Juno Therapeutics was even faster to IPO [raising $265m], since it filed to go public in 2014, 16 months after its founding. Juno was sold to Celgene for $9 billion in 2018," GeekWire writes.