• General
  • September 10, 2020
  • 3 minutes read

Grail Files To Go Public

Cancer detection company Grail has formally filed to go public with the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC), despite having…

Cancer detection company Grail has formally filed to go public with the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC), despite having no established product or revenue stream yet. Grail is seeking to debut on the Nasdaq and trade under the ticker “GRAL”. As a private company, Grail, which was founded in 2015, has been heavily funded, with $2 billion raised from investors including DNA machine maker Illumina (which the company was spun out of), Sequoia Capital China, Johnson & Johnson, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Grail is looking to develop a blood test that’ll be capable of detecting early-stage cancer. The company is currently solely focused on clinical trials and research and development, which typically cost sizeable amounts to run. It’s such that Grail reports having roughly $686 million in cash on its balance sheet as of the end of June of this year, despite having secured up to $2 billion in funding as a private company.

In 2019, Grail lost about $255 million from operations, compared to $276 million in the year before. For the first six months of this year, the company burned through $136.4 million in cash, compared to $117.2 million in the same period of last year. Grail currently has more than 400 employees spread across offices in U.S. and the U.K. Out of that number, 327 are engaged in research and development activities. 

Grail is led by CEO Hans Bishop, who previously led biopharmaceutical company Juno Therapeutics before it was scooped up by biotech giant Celgene. Celgene, which itself was later acquired in one of the biggest deals in biotech history, paid $9 billion to takeover Juno Therapeutics in 2018. Hans Bishop, who joined Grail just last year, notably took home a $65 million prorated annual pay package in that same year.




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