Wilmington, NC - After two bruising years of down rounds, broken IPOs, and stalled pipelines, October and November 2025 are sending a very clear signal: capital and strategic buyers are back in biotech. M&A volume is up. Venture funding has swung sharply higher quarter-on-quarter. Corporate VCs and specialist funds are putting real money to work again. For founders and executive teams, this isn’t just a capital markets story; it’s a leadership story.
1. M&A: Big Checks Are Moving Again
Across pharma and biotech, 2025 M&A has already surpassed $70 billion in upfront value through early October, according to one industry analysis, outpacing the historical average on both deal count and value. October and November have continued that momentum with a string of large transactions:
• Novartis announced a $12 billion acquisition of Avidity Biosciences, its largest deal in more than a decade, to deepen its rare-disease and RNA pipeline.
• Thermo Fisher Scientific agreed to acquire Clario for up to $9.4 billion, its third major deal of 2025, expanding its clinical trial and data capabilities.
• Johnson & Johnson is paying $3.05 billion for Halda Therapeutics, adding a novel “hold-and-kill” oncology platform to its portfolio and reinforcing the appetite for next-generation cancer modalities.
• Analysts are tracking a broader “autumn upswing” in pharma and biotech acquisitions, including high-profile bidding contests such as Pfizer’s winning move for obesity player Metsera.
Deal trackers show that 2025 is running ahead of the historical average in deal count, with a mean of 21 deals versus the long-term mean of 19, and a skew toward platform and late-stage assets rather than one-off products. In short: strategic buyers are using M&A again as a primary growth tool, and they are willing to pay for differentiated biology, later-stage assets, or true enabling platforms.
2. Venture Funding: From Freeze to Thaw
On the private side, the funding picture has shifted just as dramatically. A GlobalData / Pharmaceutical Technology analysis found that biotech venture financing jumped 70.9% in total deal value in Q3 2025 versus Q2, marking the sharpest quarter-on-quarter recovery in years. Several data points from October-November 2025 reinforce that this is not a one-off:
• A report from BioPharma Dive notes that corporate venture activity has surged in 2025, with pharma corporate funds stepping in to lead or co-lead rounds that might previously have stalled in the traditional VC market.
• European life sciences VC Sofinnova Partners closed a €650M (~$750M) fund in November to back early-stage biotech and medtech, explicitly committing to both initial and follow-on financings in US and European companies.
• An October survey highlighted seven major venture funds collectively deploying around $4 billion into biotech this fall, including large vehicles from Frazier Life Sciences and Omega Funds.
• Individual financings in November alone include Aspen Neuroscience’s $115 million Series C to advance personalized cell therapies, and Profluent Bio’s $106 million round for AI-driven protein design.
Even geographically, the rebound is visible. London’s life sciences sector, for example, has secured about $2.1 billion in venture capital year-to-date, a 60% year-over-year jump, heavily weighted toward AI-enabled diagnostics and drug discovery. The headline: After a period of extreme selectivity, capital is flowing again to credible science, robust data, and clearly articulated development plans.
3. What’s Getting Funded and Bought Now
Looking at October’s deal and funding breakdowns, several themes stand out:
• Autoimmune and inflammatory disease are drawing significant licensing and M&A activity, alongside oncology mainstays.
• AI-enabled drug discovery and platform companies are capturing a disproportionate share of new financings, from early discovery engines to full-stack development platforms.
• Precision medicine and advanced modalities, from RNA-targeted therapies to next-generation cell and gene platforms, feature heavily in both public and private deal trackers.
In other words, buyers and investors are pursuing pipeline plus platform: late-stage or de-risked assets with clear value, paired with enabling technologies that can sustain multi-asset franchises.
4. What This Means for Biotech Leadership Teams
For venture-backed and pre-commercial biotechs, this shift is not just about valuation. It’s about readiness. Increased M&A and funding activity raises the bar on:
• Quality and compliance infrastructure: Strategic buyers now assume that GxP systems, QA, and supply-chain controls can scale quickly if they move on a transaction. Weak quality leadership will absolutely surface in diligence.
• CMC and Tech Ops leadership: The jump from promising biology to investable or acquirable program depends heavily on manufacturing credibility: robust CMC plans, realistic timelines, and true “launch-capable” operations.
• Strategic clarity: In a more selective but more active market, companies that cannot clearly articulate their therapeutic thesis, development path, and potential exit options are at a disadvantage, regardless of underlying science.
• Board and C-suite composition: Investors and acquirers are focusing on teams that have successfully navigated today’s environment: derisking in a constrained capital market, not just riding the 2020-2021 boom.
This is where executive search becomes directly linked to value creation. Capital is returning, but it is not indiscriminate. Biotechs with experienced, execution-focused leadership teams will capture the bulk of the opportunity.
5. How Prestige Scientific Fits Into This Moment
At Prestige Scientific, we’re seeing this inflection point firsthand in our conversations with CEOs, boards, and investors across the industry:
• Venture-backed companies are moving from survival mode back to growth mode, but they are being far more deliberate about their first CEO, CMO, CTO, Chief Regulatory, and Quality hires.
• Boards are re-evaluating whether their leadership bench is truly built for M&A readiness and accelerated partnering, rather than just day-to-day operations.
• Late-stage private companies and newly public biotechs are using this window to upgrade their executive teams ahead of strategic reviews, registrational trials, or potential sale processes.
The message behind the October-November 2025 data is simple: The window is opening again. Companies that align capital, strategy, and leadership will be the ones that define the next cycle. If your organization is preparing to:
• Raise a significant round in 2026
• Engage in serious partnering discussions, or
• Position itself as an attractive M&A target
Then the quality of your executive team and functional leaders will be scrutinized as closely as your data package. Prestige Scientific partners with life sciences companies to build those teams, particularly in Clinical Development, Quality, CMC/Technical Operations, Regulatory, and key C-suite roles. So that when capital and strategic buyers arrive, you’re ready.
-Stephen Provost, Managing Director & Co-Founder, Prestige Scientific
About Prestige Scientific:
Prestige Scientific is an executive search firm that advises our clients on recruiting impactful leaders. We provide our clients with a performance-based hiring system that identifies leaders with past success meeting similar corporate objectives as their own, while overcoming challenges and adhering to critical timelines. We have dedicated experts in eleven practice areas that mirror a typical biopharma company, allowing us to support our client's growth from Discovery through Commercial.
