Months after striking SHP2 deal with AbbVie, Jacobio pulls in $174M+ from Hong Kong IPO
The seasoned crew at Jacobio has raised $174.1 million on its HKEX debut, fuelling a pipeline anchored by two AbbVie-partnered allosteric SHP2 inhibitors.
It’s significantly less than what the biotech was rumored to be seeking back in August — Bloomberg’s sources said it could be as much as $400 million — but Qiming, which has backed the biotech since its Series A, was happy about how it went from founding to IPO in just five years. At 12.34%, Qiming owned the largest chunk of stock in Jacobio.

Jacobio has positioned itself firmly within an emerging group of Chinese upstarts with the lofty ambition to only develop in-house drugs that are first-in-class across the globe. That means no in-licensing and no me-too or me-better products — the two strategies that many of its better-known counterparts were built on.
The top team comprises CEO Yinxiang Wang, R&D chief Shaojing Hu and president of administration Jiessie Wang. The trio worked together at Betta Pharma, a Shenzhen-listed biotech that developed and now markets an epidermal growth factor receptor inhibitor called icotinib.
Like much of the industry, though, cancer and autoimmune disease loom large in the portfolio, with an additional focus on infectious diseases. To full flesh out the treatments, Jacobio has set up a subsidiary and a joint venture.
Aside from the SHP2 drugs, there’s also JAB-3068, which inhibits an enzyme believed to play a role in several blood cancers called PTPN11. The idea is that it can work downstream for PD-1 checkpoints and lift immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment.
Other investors include Hillhouse, Lilly Asia Ventures and Taiwan’s Center Laboratories.