The corporate investor arms of Eli Lilly, Sanofi and Pfizer have participated in billions worth of venture capital rounds, but GV is the industry’s biggest spender.
The biggest corporate spender in biotech isn’t the investment arm of a well-known Big Pharma. Rather, Google parent Alphabet’s GV earns that title, having participated in deals worth a cumulative $5.23 billion since the beginning of 2025.
This total—which was spread across 20 deals, according to data collected by PitchBook—makes the tech firm one of biotech’s most influential venture capital investors.
GV lists hundreds of biotechs on its portfolio, among them some of the biggest newsmakers in biotech, such as pancreatic cancer biotech Revolution Medicines. GV invested in RevMed’s $100 million series C in 2019, exiting when the company went public in February 2020.
GV tends to participate in larger deals, according to a PitchBook analysis. The firm was founded in 2009 and currently has $13 billion in assets under management.
Lilly USA is the most prolific dealmaker in life sciences VC, participating in 38 total deals since January 1, but the total worth of these transactions was lower than GV’s spend, at a cumulative $2.5 billion. If you add in the pharma’s Asia unit—Lilly Asia Fund, which is separate—Eli Lilly had its fingerprints on 63 deals for $4.2 billion, falling short of GV’s total by more than $1 billion.
Other major corporate VC actors in the pharma industry include Sanofi Ventures, which participated in 30 deals for a cumulative $3.7 billion, and Pfizer Ventures, which notched 18 deals for $1.3 billion.
Venture capital is the lifeblood of U.S. biopharma industry, with J.P. Morgan reporting that funding reached $23.9 billion across 385 rounds this year. Fundraisings have slowed in the third quarter but the bank predicts the trend will push 2026 to $33 billion, topping last year’s $30.5 billion.
If 2026 does exceed 2025, it will mark the fourth consecutive years of venture capital growth in the industry, J.P. Morgan said.
The third quarter saw 68 rounds of $100 million or more, led by Encoded Therapeutics’ $275 million series F and Solstice Oncology’s $225 million series A, J.P. Morgan noted. The bulk of the fundraisings were $50 million or less.
Investors preferred later-stage fundraisings, series B or later, according to the J.P. Morgan report. First-time fundings hit the lowest level since the third quarter of 2025, with just $1.7 billion recorded for the third quarter. There are about 170 total series A and seed round financings, down from a peak of 400 in 2021.
The U.S. led the way in venture financings, despite China’s rise as an innovation hub. Those deals tended toward licensing partnerships, with many Big Pharmas seeking massive back-ended partnerships with biotechs in the region.
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