Cambridge-based biotech Bit.bio is the biggest riser on this year’s Sifted 100: UK and Ireland leaderboard, climbing 73 places on 2024, from 94th to 21st.
Despite its revenue growth, the company recently underwent a leadership and staff clearout. Bit.bio has also dropped its focus on therapeutics discovery, in part to reassure investors antsy about the high failure rates for new treatments.
December saw a flurry of activity for the company with founder Mark Kotter stepping down as CEO to become vice-chairman of the company. Serial entrepreneur Jonathan Milner, cofounder of life sciences company Abcam, had been named interim CEO on December 9 but his appointment — which officially began on January 6 — ended just weeks later.
Science luminaries and Bit.bio directors Hermann Hauser, Greg Winter and Weslie Janeway also stepped down in February, according to Companies House records. None of the departing directors have commented on the developments. Representatives from Bit.bio’s major investors took the vacated spots.
Milner was replaced by Bit.bio CFO Przemek Obloj, who stepped up as interim boss. The company is now slimming its headcount by a quarter and making biomedical tools its main focus instead of therapeutics development.
“It’s not really a pivot, it’s a narrowing of our focus,” Obloj tells Sifted. The biotech, which spun out of the University of Cambridge in 2016, had been running several drug discovery programmes. Now, it will focus on developing its cell programming technology, which produces human cells for research and drug discovery.
“We had enough science for three unicorns, if not three decacorns [aka a company valued at more than $10bn]. We had the tools side and we had the clinical side — the competition for resources between these sides of the business was very real,” Obloj says.
Investors were concerned about Bit.bio’s broad focus and the risks involved with developing therapeutics, Obloj explains. “A clinical business is a binary bet — in several years, you might have something worth billions or worth nothing, and investors don’t like that risk in the current market.”
The biotech industry has “had a difficult couple of years”, Obloj adds. “Budgets have shrunk and there’s a scarcity of big exits. We’re not going to see things go back to the levels of exuberance witnessed in 2019/2020.”
The company’s repositioning follows a $30m raise in December. “The round was premised on streamlining the business,” Obloj says. The company has banked $225m overall from investors including Arch Venture and Chinese tech group Tencent.
On the departed directors, Obloj says, “They all remain investors and friends of Bit.bio. I would not rule out some of them returning to the board at a later stage of the company’s development.” Milner, meanwhile, “remains close and supportive”.
Sifted contacted Kotter and Milner for comment.
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