France's Bionyra Pharma launches with €143M Series A to advance inflammatory-disease biologics

France's Bionyra Pharma has emerged with a €143 million ($165 million) Series A, one of the largest French biotech rounds of the year. The round was co-led by Jeito Capital and Sofinnova Partners, with Arkin Bio Ventures, Sanofi Ventures, Sixty Degree Capital, Vives Partners and Apollo Health Ventures joining.

A launch, not a follow-on

Most rounds we cover are a company's next step. This is its first. Founded in 2025 and led by CEO Dr Frédéric Marrache, Bionyra is launching with the kind of balance sheet most biotechs spend years building toward — emerging from formation straight into a nine-figure Series A. The company develops biologics for inflammatory diseases, the class of large-molecule therapeutics — antibodies and engineered proteins rather than small-molecule pills — that has reshaped how chronic inflammatory conditions are treated.

Bionyra operates across Paris and Boston, a transatlantic footprint that is increasingly standard for ambitious European biotech: scientific roots in France, proximity to US capital and clinical infrastructure on the other side. The detail matters less as geography than as signal — a company built from the outset to raise and operate at the scale its lead investors expect.

The syndicate is the story

With limited public detail on the pipeline at launch, the clearest read on the round is who wrote the cheques. Jeito Capital and Sofinnova Partners are two of Europe's most established life-science investors, and having both co-lead the same round is unusual — a doubling-up of conviction rather than a split. The presence of Sanofi Ventures, the corporate arm of the French pharma major, adds a strategic dimension: the kind of investor that can become a partner or acquirer down the line.

A €143 million Series A at inception is a bet placed early and heavily — on the team, the platform, and the premise that there is room to do something new in inflammation, a field already crowded with blockbuster biologics. The capital buys Bionyra a long runway to prove it; what it has to show for that runway, in a competitive therapeutic area, is the question the round leaves open.