Af­ter 5 qui­et years, a for­mer Scripps spin­out rais­es $200M and an­nounces plans to try again at an IPO

The first time San Diego biotech Am­brx tried to go pub­lic in 2014, they failed and the com­pa­ny’s board switched to a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy: They sold them­selves for an undis­closed amount to a syn­di­cate of Chi­nese in­vestors and phar­ma com­pa­nies.

Now, af­ter 5 qui­et years, that syn­di­cate has raised a moun­tain of cash and in­di­cat­ed they’ll soon make an­oth­er bid to go pub­lic.

Ear­li­er this month, Am­brx raised $200 mil­lion in what they billed as a crossover round fi­nanced by Fi­deli­ty, Black­Rock, Cor­morant As­set Man­age­ment, HBM Health­care In­vest­ments, In­vus, Adage Cap­i­tal Part­ners and Su­vret­ta Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment. It’s the largest amount they’ve ever raised and, ac­cord­ing to Crunch­base fig­ures, more than dou­bles the to­tal amount of VC cap­i­tal col­lect­ed since their launch 17 years ago.

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