Funding profile · CRISPR drug discovery

Algen Biotechnologies

An eight-year-old UC Berkeley spinout with a $555 million headline partnership, $11 million of reported equity, and not a single filing of its own at the SEC.

$555MMaximum value of the AstraZeneca agreement, company-stated (Oct 2025)
$11MTotal raised before that deal, per the CEO to Reuters
$350KFederal money on record: one NIH STTR Phase I award, FY2021
0Form D filings on SEC EDGAR since founding in 2018

Data as of September 22, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
2018 Founded to commercialize UC Berkeley technology Not disclosed Founders UC Berkeley IPIRA
Winter 2020 Y Combinator batch Not disclosed Y Combinator YC data
FY2021 NIH STTR Phase I, R41GM146327 $350,000 NIGMS NIH RePORTER
Before Oct 2025 Private rounds, never announced $11M total Named by Reuters: Viking Global, Illumina. Lifespan Vision Ventures describes itself as an early investor. Interview + investor release
Oct 6, 2025 AstraZeneca multi-target partnership, no equity Undisclosed upfront; up to $555M in total AstraZeneca Company release
Since Oct 2025 No financing announced None reported None Not found

What the filings show

Algen Biotechnologies, Inc. · no Regulation D filing on record

Form D
None
EDGAR registrant
None. A company name search for ALGEN returns AlgenAir, Inc. (PA), Algenesis Corp (CA), Algenpar Inc (TX) and Algentis LLC (CA)
Capital reported
$11,000,000, stated by the CEO to Reuters on Oct 6, 2025
Period covered
2018 to 2026, eight years with no notice filed
Likely exemption
Section 4(a)(2), which carries no Form D obligation
Filing
SEC EDGAR company search, accessed Sep 22, 2026

AstraZeneca PLC · Form 20-F for fiscal 2025 · filed Feb 24, 2026

Reference
Exhibit 15.1 names Algen Biotechnologies among AstraZeneca’s AI collaborations, beside ImmunAI, Syneron Bio and Stanford Medicine
Amount disclosed
None. No upfront, milestone or expense figure attributable to Algen appears
Equity
No stake taken, per the CEO and per the Financial Times report
Segment context
AstraZeneca respiratory and immunology sales were $4.23 billion in the first half of 2025, about 15% of revenue
Filing
SEC EDGAR, CIK 0000901832

Reading the filings

  1. The headline number is not capital.The $555 million is the ceiling on upfront, near term and milestone payments for targets that do not yet exist in public. AstraZeneca took no equity, so none of it is a valuation event and none of it dilutes. Only the undisclosed upfront is cash today, and neither party has sized it.
  2. Eleven million dollars in eight years is about $1.4 million a year.That is a lean burn for a wet lab company running high-throughput single cell CRISPR screens. Either the screens are cheaper than they look, or partner-funded research has been carrying a meaningful share of the cost.
  3. No Form D at all is unusual, and not illegal.A company that raises under Section 4(a)(2) rather than Regulation D files nothing, so the absence does not mean the $11 million is wrong. It does mean there is no filed record of who bought, at what size, or when. The investor names come from a wire interview and an investor press release, not from a document.
  4. Federal money is 3% of the total.$350,000 of roughly $11.35 million came from one NIH STTR Phase I award, granted for MYCN-driven neuroblastoma. RePORTER shows no Phase II follow-on after the project period ended on Aug 31, 2025, and the deal that followed a month later was in immunology, not oncology.
  5. The counterparty is the only regulated source.Every dollar figure on this page except the grant comes from Algen or from people paid to talk about Algen. The single independent, legally attested trace is one sentence in AstraZeneca’s annual report, and it carries no number.
  6. Twelve months of silence.Between the investor release of Oct 9, 2025 and Sep 22, 2026 there is no indexed news item, no financing announcement and no filing. A company that says it would consider scaling its programs at the next fundraise has not visibly raised one.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Partnership AstraZeneca gains exclusive rights to develop and commercialize therapies against a defined set of immunology targets. Named in AstraZeneca’s fiscal 2025 Form 20-F. Public record
Revenue Undisclosed upfront and near term payments. No revenue figure has been published. Company-stated
Pipeline AB-1 and AB-2 for advanced solid tumors at preclinical stage, two immunology programs at discovery, as of October 2025. Independent
Clinical No registered study on ClinicalTrials.gov. A lead anticancer agent was described as trial ready in March 2024. Differs from the 2024 claim
Headcount Y Combinator directory data lists a team of 15. YC data
Publications No PubMed record with an Algen affiliation. Platform performance figures appear only in a company-bylined trade feature. Not found

What to watch

  • A first Form D, which would put an offering size and an investor count on the record for the first time.
  • A priced Series A. The CEO said in October 2025 that scaling would be considered at the next fundraise.
  • Any AstraZeneca disclosure that attaches a number, a target or a development candidate to the collaboration.
  • A registered trial for AB-1 or AB-2, or a second pharma partner for the oncology programs Algen kept.
  • A peer-reviewed publication, which would move the platform claims out of company-controlled media.

The Algen Biotechnologies story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • General Proximity: Shared investor: Lifespan Vision Ventures. A San Francisco biotech built on one idea: most disease driving proteins can be controlled, not just blocked, given the right partner protein
  • Sixfold Bioscience: Also in Drug Discovery and Delivery. A London company that set out to deliver RNA drugs everywhere except the liver
  • CellChorus: Also in Drug Discovery and Delivery. A University of Houston spinout that films immune cells one at a time and scores how well each one kills
  • Biocartesian: Also in Drug Discovery and Delivery. A two person, YC-backed lab service that turns tissue and cell samples into what it calls digital molecular maps

Sources

  1. Public recordEDGAR company name search for ALGEN, no registrant for this companySEC · accessed Sep 22, 2026
  2. Public recordAstraZeneca PLC Form 20-F for fiscal 2025, Exhibit 15.1SEC · Feb 24, 2026
  3. Public recordNIH RePORTER award 1R41GM146327-01, $350,000, NIGMSNIH · FY2021
  4. Public recordClinicalTrials.gov and PubMed queries returning zero records for AlgenNLM · Sep 22, 2026
  5. Public recordUC Berkeley IPIRA company page, founders, inventors and 2018 founding dateUC Berkeley
  6. IndependentAstraZeneca signs up to $555 million AI deal with Algen to develop therapies, with the $11 million and no-equity detailReuters · Oct 6, 2025
  7. IndependentAstraZeneca Signs $555 Million AI Deal For CRISPR Therapies, with the October 2025 pipeline stagesBiopharmaTrend · Oct 6, 2025
  8. IndependentAstraZeneca strikes US$555m deal to commercialise AI-discovered immunology drugsThe Chemical Engineer · Oct 8, 2025
  9. CompanyAlgen Biotechnologies Announces Multi-Target Partnership to Advance AI-Powered Drug Discovery in Immunology with AstraZenecaBusiness Wire · Oct 6, 2025
  10. InvestorLifespan-Backed Algen Biotechnologies Partners with AstraZeneca to Advance AI Drug DiscoveryPR Newswire, via Macau Business · Oct 9, 2025
  11. CompanyAlgenBrain: reverse-engineering disease trajectories with CRISPR and AIBiopharma Dealmakers, Nature Portfolio · Mar 2024
  12. YC dataAlgen Biotechnologies company entry, Winter 2020 batchY Combinator directory

Compiled from SEC, NIH, NLM and UC Berkeley public records and published reports as of September 22, 2026. Form D notices report offerings under Regulation D; Algen Biotechnologies has filed none, and companies raising under Section 4(a)(2) are not required to. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Algen Biotechnologies. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.