Funding profile · Obesity and metabolic disease

Equator Therapeutics

A preclinical obesity company financed mostly by the federal government. Four NIH SBIR awards total $3.91 million against $625,000 of disclosed private equity, and the SEC has no Form D on file at all.

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

Rounds at a glance

What the filings show

Reading the filings

1. This is a grant funded company with a venture label.NIH has put in $3,905,941 across four awards. The only two private checks anyone has put a number on are $125,000 from Y Combinator and $500,000 from Alameda Research, which is $625,000. That is 6.2 grant dollars for every disclosed equity dollar, and 86% of all identified capital.
2. The SEC has nothing, and that is informative on its own.PitchBook records nine financing events between March 2020 and January 2024, including three early stage VC rounds and a secondary transaction. None produced a Form D. Either they were sold under Section 4(a)(2) and required no notice, or they were smaller and more informal than the deal count suggests. No amount, investor or valuation for any round after January 2022 has been disclosed anywhere.
3. The largest named private investor no longer exists.The $500,000 is documented only because Alameda Research collapsed. In December 2022 the Financial Times published Alameda’s private equity portfolio, and Decrypt reported that the firm “allotted $500,000 to Equator Therapeutics, a company developing a weight loss drug.” That stake became an asset of the FTX bankruptcy estate. A new investor would inherit that overhang on the cap table.
4. The grant cadence has not broken.Phase I landed in FY2021, Phase II ran FY2024 and FY2025 at $1,571,137 each, and a fresh Phase I starts September 2026. A company that fails its aims does not usually win a new award in the same institute the year its last one ends. It is the strongest external validation on the record, and it validates a research plan, not a drug.
5. The new grant is a program reset, and it is priced like one.The FY2026 award is $422,785, roughly a quarter of a Phase II year, and it funds optimization and toxicology on a new chemical series rather than IND enabling work on the old one. The Phase II application had aimed at “preparation for IND-enabling studies.” A year of Phase I work on EQ-A pushes any IND further out.
6. The company moved and the databases did not.PitchBook lists six employees and a Saint Louis office, and all four NIH awards name Saint Louis. Y Combinator, Crunchbase and CB Insights still show San Francisco. BioGenerator Ventures, a Saint Louis investor, is on PitchBook’s investor list, which is the usual reason a Bay Area YC company ends up in Missouri.

Commercial signals

What to watch

• A first Form D. Any priced round sold under Regulation D would require one within 15 days of first sale.
• Disposition of the Alameda stake through the FTX estate.
• Whether a Phase II follows the FY2026 EQ-A award, or whether private capital takes over IND enabling work.
• Publication of the mouse energy expenditure and weight data, which would let investors price the biology.
• Any named pharma partner. Interest in non appetite mechanisms would show up as a deal before it shows up as a round.

The Equator Therapeutics story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

• General Proximity: Shared investor: Healthspan Capital. A San Francisco biotech built on one idea: most disease driving proteins can be controlled, not just blocked, given the right partner protein
• CB Therapeutics: Shared investor: Healthspan Capital. A Carlsbad company that brews cannabinoids, psilocybin and other plant and fungal molecules in engineered yeast
• Isabl: Shared investor: Sand Hill Angels. A Memorial Sloan Kettering spin out that reads the whole tumor genome and transcriptome instead of a gene panel
• Origami Therapeutics: Also in Therapeutics. A small San Diego company designing oral pills that strip the mutant huntingtin protein out of brain cells while leaving the normal protein alone

Sources

1. Public recordNIH RePORTER, four NIDDK awards to Equator Therapeutics, Inc.NIH · FY2021 to FY2026
2. Public recordSBIR.gov award 213507, Phase II total award and contactsHHS and NIH · Jul 20, 2024
3. Public recordSEC EDGAR company search and full text search, no Form D for Equator TherapeuticsSEC · checked Sep 23, 2026
4. Public recordClinicalTrials.gov search, no study sponsored by Equator TherapeuticsClinicalTrials.gov · Sep 23, 2026
5. IndependentKnockoff Lotions, Weight Loss Drugs, Chinese News Sites: Inside Alameda’s Investment PortfolioDecrypt, Sander Lutz · Dec 6, 2022
6. Data providerEquator Therapeutics company profile: deal history, patents, investors, addressPitchBook · accessed Sep 2026
7. Data providerEquator Therapeutics company profile: total raised and investor listCB Insights · accessed Sep 2026
8. CompanyEquator Therapeutics website, science and team pages, St. Louis address in footerAccessed Sep 23, 2026
9. CompanyEquator Therapeutics company profile, Winter 2020 batchY Combinator · accessed Sep 2026

Compiled from SEC, NIH, SBIR.gov and ClinicalTrials.gov public records and published reports as of September 22, 2026. No Form D notice was found for this issuer; amounts shown for private rounds come from third party data providers and published reporting, not from filings. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Equator Therapeutics. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.