Raised $625M at $16 a Share, Kailera Tops Moderna's 2018 IPO Record

Kailera Therapeutics priced just under 40 million shares at $16 apiece Friday, pulling in $625 million on its Nasdaq debut under KLRA. That’s a beat on Moderna’s $600 million raise in December 2018, making Kailera the largest biotech IPO on record. The company priced at the top of its $14-to-$16 range, landing $15 million above the $610 million target, and underwriters hold additional options to buy more shares at the offering price.

The deal context: Pfizer paid nearly $10 billion for Metsera, a peer obesity biotech, after outbidding Novo Nordisk last fall. In February, Generate:Biomedicines raised $400 million in an IPO that was briefly called a record. Kailera’s debut cleared it by 56%.

What does the $625 million buy? It’s led by ribupatide, a GLP-1/GIP receptor dual agonist developed in partnership with China’s Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals, currently in three ongoing Phase 3 studies. Phase 2 data showed a 12.1% weight reduction at 26 weeks on 25-mg or 50-mg doses, versus 2.3% for placebo. Injectable ribupatide gets roughly $625 million through Q2 2028. The oral version gets $150 million, with a Phase 3 start expected in the first half of 2027. A third asset, KAI-7535, a daily oral GLP-1, gets $50 million for Phase 2.

Kailera has raised $1.625 billion across three rounds since its October 2024 debut, without a Phase 3 readout yet.

Diana Kowalski