Iambic maintains momentum from string of Big Pharma partnerships by aiming for IPO

Iambic Therapeutics is maintaining the momentum generated by its recent megaround and Big Pharma partnerships by gearing up to go public.

The San Diego-based AI biotech has yet to announce how many shares it’s planning to offer—or at what price—but the company did disclose in its Securities and Exchange Commission filing Monday that its top spending priority would be IAM1363.

The oral brain-penetrant small molecule HER2 inhibitor is currently undergoing a phase 1 study in patients with advanced HER2-altered solid tumors. Beyond that study, Iambic’s plan is to kick off a registrational trial of IAM1363 in early 2027.

“We believe IAM1363 is the only known HER2 tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) that binds to the inactive (DFG-out) conformation of the HER2 kinase domain,” the biotech explained in its filing. “We believe this distinct Type II binding mode may contribute to the molecule's combination of selectivity for HER2 vs EGF, and broad coverage against HER2 variants with activating mutations.”

This means IAM1363 has potential to be developed across multiple HER2-driven solid tumor indications, including in breast cancer, gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma and non-small cell lung cancer.

Iambic brought early-phase data on IAM1363 to the European Society of Medical Oncology meeting last year that showed that the prospect was linked with anti-tumor activity in patients with HER2-mutant NSCLC and HER2-positive breast and gastric cancers, plus other indications that don’t yet have approved HER2-directed TKIs or antibodies.

Some of the profits will be channelled toward taking two other candidates, IAM217 and IAM-C1, into the clinic. IAM217 is a brain-penetrant allosteric inhibitor for KIF18A that is being targeted at ovarian cancer, triple-negative breast cancer and other solid-tumor cancers. Meanwhile, IAM-C1 is a selective dual inhibitor of CDK2 and CDK4 being aimed at breast cancers and CCNE1-amplified cancers.

The company was founded in 2019 by its CEO Tom Miller, Ph.D., and its Chief Technology Officer Fred Manby, Ph.D. Miller was a Cal Tech professor with a focus on the confluence of AI and biology, while Manby spent much of his academic career exploring the application of AI to small molecule drug discovery at the University of Bristol in the U.K.

The company currently numbers 171 full-time employees and had $207.9 million in the bank as of the end of June. Iambic has never had a problem fundraising, with a $53 million series A in 2021 followed by a $100 million series B in 2023 and a similarly sized round in November 2025.

It’s not only investors who have been attracted by Iambic’s software and drug discovery assets. The likes of Revolution Medicines, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Lundbeck, Nvidia and Bayer have all penned partnerships with Iambic, while AbbVie got on board yesterday.

In February, Takeda inked a multiyear deal to access the biotech’s broad suite of drug discovery platforms—including itsgenerative model NeuralPLexer—for up to $1.7 billion biobucks with an initial focus on oncology, gastrointestinal and inflammation indicatons.

The deal's financial potential made it one of the largest AI drug discovery deals to date. But Miller told Fierce at the time that that the company only collaborates when it feels a potential agreement will make its own pipeline stronger.

“The Takeda deal is a combination of both tech deployment and involved drug discovery,” Miller said in the interview back in February. “It continues traction in the ways which we can monetize the platform.”

Iambic unveiled its IPO ambitions within days of Lilly-backed TRex Bio and hypertension-focused Retension Pharmaceuticals making similar moves. Yesterday, ARARx Pharmaceuticals said it was hoping to raise $446 million from an IPO in a year that has already seen record-breaking listings from the likes of Parabilis Medicines and Kailera Therapeutics.