Swiss biotech M&A activity is hitting decade-highs as the country’s biotechs pursue international capital and strategic repositioning.

In 2025, outbound Swiss biotech M&A deal value climbed to $33.91 billion, more than double 2024 levels and the highest annual total since 2008, according to White & Case and Mergermarket figures. Inbound biotech M&A targeting Swiss biotechs, meanwhile, reached a record high of $9.17 billion.

M&A: A tactical tool for Swiss biotechs

The high M&A values reflect a Swiss biotech market where key players are pursuing deals to deepen product pipelines and fine-tune commercial strategy.

In October last year, for example, Basel-based pharmaceutical multinational Novartis agreed a $12 billion deal to acquire Avidity Biosciences, a US-based biotech developing treatments for rare diseases.

The deal, Novartis’s largest in more than ten years, is part of a long-term strategy to focus developing new medicines in the areas of heart, kidney, immunology, neuroscience, and oncology. The deal also helps to replenish the Novartis pipeline and push back a wall of approaching patent expiries in the early 2030s.

Deal impetus has carried into 2026. In April Lonza Group, a Swiss biotech and pharmaceuticals manufacturer, announced a $4 billion deal to divest its capsules and health ingredients business to US private equity firm Lone Star.

The deal is the final step of a strategic portfolio overhaul to position Lonza Group as a “pure-play” pharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) focused on innovative, higher-margin therapeutic areas.

From public to private: A biotech financing transition

Momentum behind Swiss biotech M&A is set to receive a further boost from a shift in how the industry is funded in Switzerland.

The 2026 Swiss Biotech Report, produced by investment promotion agency GGBa, shows that private funding is on a steep upward trajectory, and becoming an increasingly important anchor for financing biotech growth and research in the country.

In 2025, privately financed Swiss biotechs raised a record CHF1.15 billion, a 38% year-on-year rise. Private capital accounted for 45% of total sector financing, up from the 30% share recorded in previous years.

Switzerland does not use taxpayer income to fund industrial policy or startup funding, obliging biotech entrepreneurs in the country to increasingly turn to global venture capital firms for finance.

The Swiss biotech industry is outward-looking. Four out of five biotech patents filed in Switzerland include an international partner, and less than a third of the Swiss biotech talent pool (30%) is comprised of Swiss nationals.

The global approach has seen Swiss biopharma attract 41 funding rounds valued at $2.3 billion between 2024 and 2026, according to JP Morgan, more than any other European country barring  the UK.

The Swiss model is set to attract ongoing capital inflows from global players, who see Switzerland as an open and stable market through a period of geopolitical uncertainty.

Growing investment at funding round level will gradually build a pipeline of profitable biotech businesses that are attractive M&A targets for strategics and private equity firms.

The Swiss biotech dealmaking cycle appears to have further room to run.