Funding profile · Nucleic acid therapeutics
Excepgen
A company reporting $14 million in total seed funding from named institutional investors, with no Form D on file under its own name at the SEC. Here is what the public record shows and what it does not.
Data as of September 25, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.
Rounds at a glance
| When | Round | Amount | Investors | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Y Combinator, Winter 2019 | Not disclosed by YC | Y Combinator | YC data |
| Mar 2019 | Seed | $150,000 | Y Combinator, Pi Campus | Aggregator |
| Aug 2019 | Seed, YC follow-on | $125,000 | Y Combinator | Aggregator |
| Jul 2020 | Seed | $9.0M | Not disclosed | Aggregator |
| Jun 2023 | Equity investment for a single project | $100,000 | VitaDAO | DAO governance record |
| Aug 24, 2023 | Seed close, “total seed funding” per company | $4.0M latest tranche; $14.0M total, company reported | Led by RA Capital Management; Gravity Fund, Apollo Projects (Sam Altman), ZAKA VC | Company release |
What the filings show
Nothing. A search of SEC EDGAR’s company database for “Excepgen” returns no matching entity, and a full text search of EDGAR filings for the same name returns zero hits, as of September 25, 2026. That is unusual for a company that names four institutional and family office investors in its own press materials. It does not mean no money changed hands. It means either the company raised under an exemption that does not require a Form D, such as Section 4(a)(2), or it filed under a legal name different enough from “Excepgen” that this search did not catch it, or a required filing is simply missing from the public record.
Reading the record
- The company’s own total does not quite add up from public pieces.A third party research database itemizes $150,000 (Mar 2019), $125,000 (Aug 2019), $9.0 million (Jul 2020) and $4.0 million (Aug 2023). That sums to about $13.3 million against the company’s stated $14.0 million total seed. The gap could be rounding, an undisclosed bridge, or a round that database missed.
- No Form D means no confirmed investor count or share price.Everything known about round size and lead investor for the 2023 close comes from the company’s own release and from investor blog posts by ZAKA VC and Oxonian Ventures, not from an independent regulatory filing.
- The VitaDAO investment is separate and documented differently.VitaDAO’s $100,000 came through its own on chain governance process, initiated June 28, 2023, about two months before the $4 million round was announced, and it is earmarked for a specific pan flu vaccine program rather than general operations.
- The named investor list points to a credible seed, not proof of a priced round structure.RA Capital Management is a large, well known life sciences investor; Apollo Projects is tied to Sam Altman. Their participation is a strong signal even without a filing, but it is not the same as a verified capitalization table.
- Earlier rounds rest on a single secondary source.The $150,000, $125,000 and $9.0 million figures for 2019 and 2020 come from one research aggregator citing Dealroom.co, and were not independently confirmed in this research.
Commercial signals
| Signal | Detail | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Pharma partnership, 2019 platform | An active collaboration with AstraZeneca to express hard to make proteins, described as early stage. No update found since 2019. | Independent, 2019 |
| Peer reviewed evidence | One paper, NPJ Vaccines, Apr 29, 2025, behind the current RNAx platform. | Public record |
| Patents | Four pending international applications (WO 2021/055369, WO 2022/192694, WO 2022/197940, WO 2023/183889) named in the paper’s competing interests statement. | Public record |
| Named RNAx customers | None found. | Not found |
| FDA, clinical trials, federal grants | No FDA record, no registered trial, no NIH or NSF award found under the company name. | Not found |
What to watch
- Whether a Form D or amended filing appears under Excepgen or a related legal name.
- Any new priced round following the pan flu vaccine work VitaDAO funded.
- Confirmation, one way or the other, of the AstraZeneca collaboration’s current status.
- An independent report reconciling the $13.3 million itemized total with the company’s $14.0 million figure.
The Excepgen story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordSEC EDGAR company search and full text search for Excepgen, zero results
- Public recordNPJ Vaccines paper, competing interests and patent list
- Public recordUS20240141373A1 patent filing
- IndependentExcepGen emerges from Y Combinator, taking aim at better proteins for drug discovery
- IndependentExcepGen: Genetic Medicine Company Closes $14 Million In Total Seed Funding
- InvestorZAKA VC expands its global biotechnology portfolio and invests in ExcepGen
- IndependentExcepGen Inc, RNA therapeutics for longevity, project and board evaluation
- IndependentExcepgen company and funding research summary
- InterviewMeet Thomas Folliard, CEO and Founder, of ExcepGen
- CompanyExcepGen Emerges From Stealth with New Funding for its Nucleic Acid Therapeutics Platform
- Public recordY Combinator company page, Excepgen
Compiled from SEC and other public records and published reports as of September 25, 2026. Form D notices report offerings under Regulation D; amounts reflect the filing date. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Excepgen. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.