Good day. The biotechnology industry is riding into the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference this week with some momentum.

The conference, held annually in San Francisco, has more than 8,000 registered attendees, according to the bank.

They should be in good spirits. There were $223 billion in global biopharmaceutical mergers and acquisitions in 2025, making last year the third busiest for the sector on record, according to investment bank Stifel.

Initial public offerings are revving up. Last year, nine biotechs listed on U.S. exchanges, down from 19 the year before, according to J.P. Morgan. But on Friday, Aktis Oncology staged its stock-market debut. The radiopharmaceutical company upsized its offering, went public at $18, the top of its expected range, and closed at $22.40, up more than 24%. 

Venture capitalists have responded. U.S. and European biotechs raised $7 billion in venture funding across 157 deals in the last three months of 2025, the highest deal volume of any quarter last year, according to HSBC Innovation Banking.

There are concerns. Investors and entrepreneurs, for example, fret over the turnover at the Food and Drug Administration. But overall, their mood has brightened.

“People are feeling optimistic,” said Kathryn McDonough, head of life sciences innovation economy, commercial banking, for J.P. Morgan. “Innovation continues to be really strong.”

And now on to the news...

Walmart expanding drone delivery. The country’s largest retailer plans to launch a lot more drones this year, making deliveries by sky available to tens of millions of U.S. shoppers. Walmart says it plans to roll out delivery-by-drone at an additional 150 stores over the next year in partnership with drone operator Wing, a unit of Alphabet. Its goal is to set up the service at more than 270 of its locations nationwide by the end of 2027.

• The effort represents an ambitious expansion of the retailer’s previously announced plans for drone delivery, which is currently mostly limited to the Dallas-Fort Worth and Atlanta regions.
   
• Wing estimates that more than 40 million Walmart shoppers would have access to the service after the expansion, up from roughly 2 million today.

The Defense Department has selected Owen West, a former Wall Street trader and Marine, to lead its Defense Innovation Unit, the department’s highest-profile unit tasked with bringing startup technology into the U.S. military, according to two department officials. West will assume leadership in February or March, the Defense Department officials said. West is a familiar figure around the Defense Department: He began working there early last year as the lead Pentagon staffer with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. 

Google unveiled a set of tools for retailers that helps them roll out AI agents, aiming to make it easier for brands to reach their customers who are shopping with the technology. The new retail AI agents, which help shoppers find their desired items, provide customer support and let people order food at restaurants, are part of what Alphabet-owned Google calls Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience.

Correction: PitchBook Data estimated in the fall that there were 12,422 U.S. venture capital deals in 2025 through Sept. 30, an increase of 6.5% from the same period in 2024 and 5.9% higher than the same 2023 time frame. It also estimated there were 3,839 pre-seed and seed deals in the first three quarters of 2025, a decline of 6.5% compared with 2024. Last Monday's newsletter incorrectly said that PitchBook’s estimates were for the full year and that they represented an expected drop in overall deals of nearly 20% from both 2024 and 2023, and an almost 30% drop in pre-seed and seed deals compared with 2024. 

As the year was beginning, Andreessen Horowitz announced it had raised just over $15 billion, distributed across several funds. The new funds closed in early 2026, a strong start to the year after PitchBook Data reported that venture funds in the U.S. raised just $66 billion in total last year.

The haul was more than twice the amount the firm collected across several funds in 2024 and brought its assets under management to over $90 billion.

The largest tranche was $6.75 billion raised for its Growth Fund 5, a big jump from the prior fundraising. There was also $1.7 billion for its Apps Fund 2, $1.7 billion for Infrastructure Fund 2 and $700 million for its Bio+Healthcare Fund 5. Another $3 billion was allocated to other venture strategies, the firm said.

Andreessen Horowitz will invest in AI and crypto technologies and their applications across “biology, health, defense, public safety, education and entertainment,” Ben Horowitz, the firm’s co-founder and general partner, wrote in a post on the firm’s web site.

The total also included $1.18 billion for its American Dynamism Fund 2, roughly double the size of the first one for this strategy.

Horowitz’s post struck a patriotic note, calling it “fundamentally important for humanity” that the United States win the technology race and that that responsibility rested partly on the firm’s shoulders. “The technology landscape that we will be investing into is dynamic, innovative and intensely competitive with China,” he wrote.

—Yuliya Chernova

People

NewView Capital promoted Nick Bunick to partner and Cormac Dunn to principal. The firm also welcomed Sandra Smith as an operating partner.

Aetherflux appointed Joe Yaffe as chief operating officer and chief legal officer. He was previously managing partner of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom’s Palo Alto office.

Invoca, an AI-powered revenue execution platform, appointed Katherine Starros as senior vice president, people and culture, and promoted Ben Sullivan to chief revenue officer. Starros most recently served as vice president of people at Altruist. Before joining Invoca in 2017, Sullivan was at ON24.

Deals

Physical retail data and insights provider Standard AI acquired Pathr.ai, a startup that analyzes movement and behavior within retail stores.

Rain, a New York-based stablecoin payments platform, scored $250 million in Series C funding led by Iconiq, valuing the company at $1.95 billion.

Aurora Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Mass.-based personalized gene editing startup, launched with a $16 million seed investment from Menlo Ventures.

Spangle AI, a Seattle-based agentic infrastructure layer for brands, landed $15 million in Series A funding. NewRoad Capital Partners led the round, which included participation from Madrona, DNX Ventures and Streamlined Ventures.

BrightHeart, an AI platform for prenatal ultrasound, completed an €11 million Series A round co-led by Odyssée Venture and GO Capital.

Topos Bio, a San Francisco-headquartered AI-driven drug discovery startup, emerged from stealth with $10.5 million in seed funding from investors including Boldstart Ventures, Threshold and Neo.

Tesoro XP, a rewards platform enabling retailers to fund in-game currency for gamers, was seeded with a $5.4 million investment. Treasury was among the investors, and Jeff Cruttenden will join the board.

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This newsletter was compiled by Matthew Strozier and Zachary Cole.

WSJ Pro Venture Capital is a premium service of The Wall Street Journal. We cover venture capital and the global startup ecosystem. Share your tips, comments and questions: vcnews@wsj.com

The Team: Matthew Strozier, Yuliya Chernova, and Brian Gormley.

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