Biotech startup ecosystem
Europe's biotech ecosystem benefits from world-class research universities, strong IP frameworks, and growing specialist VC funds. The UK, Switzerland, and the Nordics are particularly strong in drug discovery, diagnostics, and synthetic biology. We track 105 organisations in this sector across 6+ countries.
Showing 1–20 of 105 Biotech
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Biotech results
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Advanced Therapies Congress 2026
Europe's largest cell and gene therapy event. Price: about GBP 2000; startups often access subsidized exhibition pods. Strong for biotech founders and manufacturing partners.
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Advanced Therapies Congress 2027
The Advanced Therapies Congress runs 9-10 March 2027 at ExCeL London, billed as Europe's largest commercial cell and gene therapy conference and exhibition. It brings together around 3,300 global executives, 300 speakers and 75 startups spanning ATMP companies, pharma, biotech, researchers, clinicians and regulators.
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Aerska
Aerska is a Dublin-based RNA medicines biotech company that uses proprietary brain shuttle technology to overcome the blood-brain barrier and deliver RNAi therapies for neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Founded in 2025 by Jack O'Meara, Dave Hardwicke, and Stu Milstein, the company emerged from stealth in October 2025 with a $21 million seed round, then closed a $39 million Series A in February 2026 led by EQT Dementia Fund and age1, bringing total funding to $60 million.
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Aidan King
Managing Partner and co-founder of Fountain Healthcare Partners. A pharmacist by training and former Elan executive, he invests across biopharmaceuticals and medical devices and has helped guide the firm's three funds and more than €425M under management.
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ALBUPAD
Developed a proprietary biomaterial made from albumin — fully biocompatible and biodegradable — engineered for next-generation drug delivery and tissue engineering, with natural tumour tropism and built-in imaging visibility. Founded 2023.
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Algalíf
Algalíf is an Icelandic biotechnology company founded in 2012 that produces high-grade natural astaxanthin from microalgae using 100% renewable geothermal energy in a fully enclosed indoor photobioreactor system. The company is certified carbon-negative, binding 75 tonnes of CO2 annually, and holds over $50M in cumulative investment. In 2025 Algalíf launched Astalíf 15, the world's first 15% natural astaxanthin oleoresin, and broke ground on the world's largest natural astaxanthin facility (12,500 m²). The board initiated IPO preparations for 2025 and appointed new leadership following the departure of long-serving CEO Orri Björnsson.
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Algorithmiq
Quantum software company relocated its global headquarters from Helsinki to Milan in May 2026, marking Italy's largest-ever quantum computing investment round of €18M. Develops quantum algorithms and classical-quantum hybrid software targeting drug discovery and industrial optimisation, with a focus on near-term quantum hardware.
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Alithea Bio
Accelerates cancer immunotherapy development with its HLA-Compass platform, a large quantitative database of HLA peptide presentation. AI-driven analytics predict off-target toxicity and support target discovery for safer, more precise therapies.
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Aphea.Bio
Aphea.Bio develops microbial-based biological crop solutions that replace synthetic pesticides and fertilisers — biostimulants, biofungicides, bioherbicides and bioinsecticides — using its proprietary APEXbio™ platform. The technology was spun out of research at Ghent University, KU Leuven and VIB. Co-founded in 2017 by Isabel Vercauteren (CEO) and Steven Vandenabeele, the company raised a €70 M Series C in July 2023 backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, SFPIM, BNP Paribas Fortis and Innovation Industries. In 2025 it secured a VLAIO grant to launch its TRANSCEND platform screening 5,000 proprietary microorganism candidates. Aphea.Bio holds B Corp certification and is a Ghent biotech hub anchor.
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Aqemia
Aqemia is a Paris-based pharmatech company building an AI-driven drug discovery platform that combines quantum-inspired physics and machine learning to generate and prioritise novel drug candidates at scale. Founded in 2019 by quantum physics researcher Maximilien Levesque and former BCG consultant Emmanuelle Martiano, the company aims to design new molecules faster and cheaper than traditional methods. It raised a 60M euro Series A and later a $38M round led by Cathay Innovation in December 2024, bringing total funding past $100 million as it moves toward clinical trials and global expansion, including a London office.
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Araris Biotech
Araris Biotech is a Basel-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company founded in 2020 as a spin-out from the Paul Scherrer Institute and ETH Zurich. The company develops a proprietary antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) linker technology that enables precise attachment of cytotoxic payloads to standard, unmodified antibodies for targeted cancer therapy — unlike conventional ADC approaches that require chemical modification of the antibody itself. This plug-and-play technology gives pharma partners a faster, cleaner path to next-generation ADC cancer treatments. Araris raised a CHF 36 million Series A in 2023 led by V-Bio Ventures, with participation from Novartis Venture Fund and Pfizer Ventures. The company represents Switzerland's strength in precision medicine and its deep integration between academic research institutes and commercially focused biotech.
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Atrandi Biosciences
Develops Semi-Permeable Capsule and droplet microfluidics partitioning technology enabling multi-step, multi-omic single-cell analysis workflows for research and high-throughput screening.
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Azafaros
Azafaros is a clinical-stage biotech company developing oral therapies for rare genetic metabolic disorders, including lysosomal diseases. Its lead development strategy focuses on compounds designed to cross the blood-brain barrier and address severe neurological progression in underserved pediatric conditions.
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Big Pi Ventures
Big Pi Ventures was founded in 2018 by Marco Veremis, Alex Eleftheriadis, and Aristos Doxiadis, all seasoned entrepreneurs with exits to Splunk, Meta/Facebook, and global PE. The firm manages approximately €250M in AUM across an early-stage fund (Big Pi II, €50M, 2023) and a growth fund (€130M first close, targeting €200M). It follows a tech-first investment thesis focused on AI, deep tech, biotech, and IP-heavy companies built by founders with a Greek nexus — whether based in Greece or part of the global diaspora. Notable portfolio companies include TileDB, Numan, and Accusonus (acquired by Meta).
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BIO-Europe Spring 2026
Life sciences partnering conference in Lisbon built around structured 1:1 meetings between biotech startups, pharma companies, and investors. Registration costs about EUR 2800+. Covers drug discovery, clinical development, and licensing. Essential for biotech startups seeking licensing deals, co-development partnerships, and Series A+ funding from specialized life-science investors.
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BioFIT 2026
Europe's leading partnering event for early-stage life-sciences innovation and technology transfer, in its 15th edition at Parc Chanot in Marseille. Built around one-on-one partnering meetings, it is ideal for biotech and medtech founders seeking licensing deals, academic collaborations, and early investors.
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BioInnovation Institute (BII)
BioInnovation Institute is a life science incubator backed by the Novo Nordisk Foundation that helps researchers and founders turn biotech and health innovations into venture ready companies. Based in Copenhagen, BII provides lab space, grant funding, expert business support, and access to investors for projects in therapeutics, diagnostics, and industrial biotech. It runs programs for both idea stage research and early startups, de risking science heavy ventures before they seek larger capital. BII is a central node in the Danish life science startup pipeline.
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Biomatter
Synthetic biology company using generative AI to design novel proteins and enzymes from scratch, creating custom biomolecules for industrial, pharmaceutical and biotech applications.
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BioNTech
BioNTech is a Mainz-based biotechnology company founded in 2008 by Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, a husband-and-wife team of immunologists, alongside Christoph Huber. Originally focused on individualized mRNA cancer immunotherapies, BioNTech gained global prominence through its partnership with Pfizer to develop one of the first approved COVID-19 vaccines (Comirnaty), which generated tens of billions in revenue. The company is publicly traded on NASDAQ and continues to invest heavily in its oncology pipeline, infectious disease vaccines, and next-generation mRNA therapeutics.
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Bioptimus
Bioptimus is the self-proclaimed "Mistral of Biology," spun out in early 2024 by a team of alumni from Google DeepMind and Owkin, including CEO Jean-Philippe Vert. The company is building what it calls the first universal foundation model for biology. Where large language models were trained on text to learn human language, Bioptimus trains on biological data—DNA sequences, protein structures, cellular imagery, and clinical phenotypes—to infer the underlying rules of life. The ambition is not just better predictions but a unified biological reasoning layer that can simulate outcomes before expensive lab work happens. By 2026, Bioptimus has moved from a research thesis to early commercial traction. After a $41M Series A in 2025, the company released its first commercial model that can predict how a specific molecule will interact with a human cell with unusually high accuracy. This enables in-silico screening that reduces wet-lab costs and improves hit rates for drug discovery. French pharma leaders such as Sanofi have begun using these models to prioritize compounds and compress early-stage discovery timelines. The product value is immediate: fewer failed experiments, faster candidate selection, and deeper mechanistic insight. Bioptimus' roadmap focuses on "multi-scale biology," connecting the micro level (genomics and proteomics) to the macro level (patient outcomes and clinical data). Rather than being limited to protein folding, the models aim to bridge across data modalities so a genetic mutation can be linked to disease pathways, tissue behavior, and potential therapeutic interventions. This requires data breadth and regulatory trust, and Bioptimus is building a defensive moat through European data sovereignty. It leverages partnerships with European research hospitals and biobanks to access high-quality patient data that is difficult for US competitors to acquire under GDPR constraints. That compliance burden becomes a competitive advantage: safer access, better provenance, and stronger alignment with European health data governance. The company remains deeply embedded in the Paris ecosystem. It was incubated inside Owkin before spinning out, maintains a presence around Station F, and benefits from the cross-pollination between French AI and biotech communities. Its investor base reflects that positioning: Sofinnova Partners, Bpifrance, Cathay Innovation, Xavier Niel, and Frst provide a blend of life-science expertise, sovereign capital, and deep-tech conviction. In 2026, Bioptimus is the clearest European bet that foundation models can unlock biology at scale—and a contender to become the default AI layer for drug discovery in Europe.
