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Roivant, a biotech developing nearly a dozen therapies for an array of diseases, has $2 billion earmarked for deals and business development, says CEO Matt Gline.

Why it matters: The cash cushion positions Roivant to pursue licensing deals or partnerships in a competitive biotech market.

State of play: Founded in 2014 by former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Roivant uses an in-licensing model — acquiring early-stage drug assets, advancing them toward commercialization and often selling them.

The strategy has paid off. Roivant partially licensed an inflammatory disease drug from Pfizer in 2022 for "basically nothing," as Gline describes it, and sold it to Roche a year later for $7.1 billion.

Friction point: Without commercialized drugs in its portfolio right now, Roivant generates little revenue.

Yes, but: The company still has about $4.5 billion of cash on its balance sheet, and its stock is up 28% year to date.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Axios Pro: Why has Roivant pursued this in-licensing strategy?

Gline: "Vivek was very good at raising money, and so we were able to build a lot of capital. 

A thing that we saw as a competitive advantage, bluntly, was to bring some combination of entrepreneurship and investor-style thinking to drug development."

"We've pioneered novel biology for pretty broad mechanisms. We found indications like Graves' disease.

We will be the first approved if we're successful. We've been looking at that across our pipeline — find novel ways to study these drugs and indications where we can make a difference, and then hopefully do a good job studying them."

What types of deals is Roivant focused on moving forward?

"We still do very little basic discovery, and we're still very much focused on pipeline expansion.

Ninety-five percent of that will take the form of in-licensing programs."

"We have a whole team of people who's basically exclusively dedicated to that activity. We are very choosy. This is not a deal-volume business. It's a deal-quality business for us."

Would you buy another public biotech company outright?

"We've never done that before. It's probably not the most obvious place for us to do deals, because it's expensive."

On the flip side, are you considering selling or out-licensing any of Roivant's programs?

"The most likely case is that we don't out-license or sell anything currently in our portfolio, because I think we have an amazing set of commercial opportunities.

We are, culturally, ruthlessly economic about that question. We have a portfolio that has attracted plenty of attention from Big Pharma.

If the right opportunity presented itself, we would have those conversations seriously."

Would you ever consider selling the entire company to Big Pharma?

"If you can do it at the right price, obviously it adds a lot of value. But sitting around in this 'pick me' context, waiting for somebody else's tastes to align with the life's work that you've built is just boring."

Roivant CEO: We have $2B for deals

The cash positions it well in a competitive biotech market.

Photo illustration of Matt Gline, CEO of Roivant, surrounded by different medicine and vitamin bottles arranged in an abstract pattern. 

Photo illustration: Axios Visuals. Photo: Courtesy of Roivant

Roivant, a biotech developing nearly a dozen therapies for an array of diseases, has $2 billion earmarked for deals and business development, says CEO Matt Gline.Why it matters: The cash cushion positions Roivant to pursue licensing deals or partnerships in a <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="competitive" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/pro/biotech-deals/2026/02/17/biopharma-vc-rebound-2026" data-vars-content-id="9cf80796-333f-4b14-a241-0b2536a9ff9f" data-vars-headline="Roivant CEO: We have $2B for deals" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/pro/biotech-deals/2026/02/17/biopharma-vc-rebound-2026" target="_self">competitive</a> biotech market.

Roivant CEO: We have $2B for deals

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