Kailera Therapeutics appears to have set a new benchmark for biotech IPOs with an upsized $625 million offering to fund its pipeline of obesity therapies.
The Waltham, Massachusetts-headquartered company is selling 39 million shares of its common stock—over-shooting the 33.3 million shares it had suggested last week—at the top end of the $14-$16 price range it had set out. It means Kailera is expecting $625 million in gross proceeds from this morning’s IPO, above the $458.7 million net proceeds the biotech had previously suggested.
Kailera’s stock is due to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol “KLRA” Friday morning. Should underwriters then fully take up their 30-day option to buy an additional 5.8 million shares at the same price of $16, the company could rake in an additional $92.8 million.
Even before that potential top-up in proceeds, the headline figure of $625 million makes Kailera the largest biotech IPO in recent memory. The top table of biotech public listings had previously been led by Moderna’s $604 million IPO back in 2018, with Sana Biotechnology’s $588 million listing in 2021 and Acelyrin’s $540 million offering in 2023 also coming close.
Led by former Cerevel Therapeutics CEO Ron Renaud, Kailera burst onto the scene in 2024 with a $400 million series A round and a portfolio of four GLP-1 drugs licensed from Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals. It followed with a $600 million series B in 2025, the second-largest raise of that year.
With IPO funding and existing cash, Kailera has previously explained that it plans to allocate $625 million to support injectable ribupatide through three ongoing global phase 3 trials through the second quarter of 2028. Hengrui has previously linked the candidate to mean weight loss of nearly 18% at 48 weeks in a late-stage trial in China last year. Although Kailera noted last month that it has not conducted a head-to-head trial against Eli Lilly’s blockbuster Zepbound, it has positioned the drug as a potential best-in-class offering.
The biotech has also set out plans to invest $150 million to support development of its once-daily oral ribupatide, which demonstrated mean weight loss of up to 12.1% over 26 weeks in a Chinese trial earlier this year. These funds will be used for planned phase 3 trials beginning in the second quarter of 2028.
Meanwhile, KAI-7535, a once-daily injectable small-molecule GLP-1, is set to receive a $50 million boost following the IPO. Hengrui has advanced the asset into a phase 3 study in China, with results expected later this year, and the proposed funding will support completion of its phase 2 clinical trial.
Kailera’s fourth obesity asset, KAI-4729—a once-weekly injectable GLP-1—will also benefit from the funding and is currently in a phase 1 trial in China.
Having overshot its previous expectations for IPO proceeds, there’s an opportunity for Kailera to use its record-breaking offering to increase these projected amounts, or to invest the money elsewhere in the business.
The obesity biotech’s listing this morning marks the end of a short-lived drought in March that appeared to halt a resurgence of biotech IPOs the previous month. Industry insiders speculated to Fierce this week that an “unusually aggressive” M&A spree by Big Pharma may have given companies pause for thought about going public.
While obesity remains a red-hot space for investors, Kailera is the first biotech focused on this area to go public this year. Previous examples include $289 million IPO of Metsera in January 2025—eleven months later, the company was bought by Pfizer in a $10 billion deal that followed a bidding war with Novo Nordisk.
