The race to dominate the $15 billion retina market just got a well-capitalized new contender.
Ollin Biosciences, a clinical-stage ophthalmology company tucked away in Austin, announced a $330 million Series B on June 24—one of the largest such rounds in biotech in recent memory, according to STAT. The financing, which was oversubscribed, positions the young company for a direct assault on Roche's Vabysmo, a blockbuster drug that has rapidly captured market share since its approval.
It's a bold bet. Vabysmo raked in roughly $5.3 billion in 2024, making it one of the industry's fastest-growing launches. But Ollin's backers—a syndicate that reads like a who's who of life sciences capital—are wagering that OLN324, the company's lead drug candidate, can do better. The molecule targets the same two biological pathways as Vabysmo but with what Ollin's team describes as meaningful design advantages: higher potency against one key target, a more compact protein structure, and stronger dosing relative to existing therapies.
Whether those technical distinctions translate into commercial triumph is, of course, the multi-billion-dollar question.
A Head-to-Head Gambit
Ollin didn't take the usual route of cherry-picking endpoints or patient populations to flatter its data. Instead, the company ran a 164-patient Phase 1b study—JADE—that put OLN324 in direct competition with faricimab, Vabysmo's chemical name. Final results, disclosed in March and presented again at Clinical Trials at the Summit in June, showed faster and more pronounced anatomic improvements in patients with diabetic macular edema and wet age-related macular degeneration. Vision gains, while only numerically superior, trended in Ollin's favor. The drug also appeared to better manage pigment epithelial detachment, a persistent headache in retinal disease treatment.
It's the kind of head-to-head trial design that gets investors' attention—riskier than going it alone, but potentially more convincing if the data hold up in larger studies. Ollin has completed an End-of-Phase 2 meeting with the FDA and secured scientific advice from the European Medicines Agency. Global Phase 3 trials in both indications are slated to begin later this year.
"This is not about incremental improvement," said Dr. Jason Ehrlich, Ollin's co-founder and CEO, in a prepared statement. Ehrlich would know: he spent years leading late-stage ophthalmology development at Genentech and Roche, working on the very drugs Ollin now aims to outflank—Vabysmo and Lucentis. That pedigree runs deep at Ollin; his co-founders include Travis Murdoch (now CEO of Braveheart Bio), Jason Coloma (CEO of Maze Therapeutics), and Atul Dandekar, another Genentech ophthalmology alum now serving as Chief Strategy Officer at Maze.
Paul Berns, a Managing Director at ARCH Venture Partners, chairs Ollin's board and is also listed as a co-founder and Executive Chairman—a structure that underscores ARCH's integral role in the company's architecture.
Capital and Confidence
TCGX, making its debut as an Ollin investor, co-led the Series B alongside ARCH. The round attracted a roster of funds rarely seen assembled outside late-stage rounds or pre-IPO buildouts: a16z Bio+Health, Blackstone Multi-Asset Investing, Commodore Capital, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, RA Capital Management, and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price. A sovereign wealth fund also participated, though Ollin declined to specify which. Mubadala Capital and Monograph Capital, which co-led Ollin's $100 million Series A last September, doubled down.
Cariad Chester, Managing Partner at TCGX, joined the board as part of the deal.
All told, Ollin has now raised $430 million since its founding in 2023. That's a formidable sum for a company that, according to LinkedIn, employs somewhere between 11 and 50 people and operates out of Austin—though it has been recruiting for alliance and program management roles in the Bay Area as of mid-2026, a signal that expansion is underway.
The capital is sized not just for pivotal trials but for the commercial infrastructure that comes after. Because if OLN324 succeeds, Ollin won't just be selling into a crowded market—it will be trying to claw share away from entrenched giants.
The Molecule in Question
OLN324 is a bispecific antibody, meaning it latches onto two separate disease targets at once: VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) and angiopoietin-2, or Ang-2. Vabysmo hits the same pair. So does Regeneron's Eylea, in different configurations. The space is littered with attempts to out-engineer the competition.
Ollin's pitch centers on potency and format. The company claims OLN324 delivers substantially higher Ang-2 inhibition than faricimab, increased molar dosing versus both faricimab and aflibercept (including Regeneron's high-dose Eylea HD), and a smaller protein footprint that may improve tissue penetration. Ollin developed the molecule in partnership with Innovent Biologics, a Chinese biopharma that discovered OLN324 and continues as a development collaborator.
Still, the retina market is becoming a crowded battlefield. Gene therapies like 4D Molecular Therapeutics' 4D-150 and novel approaches such as Merck's Wnt agonist Restoret (acquired with EyeBio in July 2024) are pushing through clinical trials. None have yet toppled Vabysmo or Eylea, which collectively command close to $10 billion in annual sales. But the calculus could shift if a new entrant demonstrates meaningfully better durability—fewer injections, better outcomes—or a superior safety profile.
Beyond the Retina
Ollin isn't a one-trick outfit. The company plans to advance OLN102, an IGF-1R/TSHR bispecific antibody in-licensed from VelaVigo, into clinical testing later this year. That molecule targets thyroid eye disease, a disfiguring condition where dual pathway inhibition might offer improved safety and efficacy. It's part of Ollin's broader strategy: acquire assets with validated biology, run disciplined trials, and advance them toward approval. No internal drug discovery labs, no speculative platform bets—just market-informed execution.
Whether that model scales in a market increasingly defined by platform companies and integrated pipelines remains to be seen. For now, Ollin has the capital, the clinical data, and the team to make a serious run at the incumbents.
And perhaps more than that—it has investors willing to write nine-figure checks on the belief that the next chapter in retinal disease treatment won't be written by Roche or Regeneron alone.
