Braveheart Bio raised more than $382 million in an initial public offering, one of the larger biotech debuts of the year, to fund a heart drug it licensed from China.
The company priced 21.2 million shares at $18 on August 5, 2026, for total proceeds of about $382.5 million, and began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker BRVE. Braveheart develops cardiac myosin inhibitors — drugs that reduce excessive heart-muscle contraction in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a condition in which the heart muscle thickens and stiffens.
The drug and the rivalry
Its lead candidate, BHB-1893, was licensed from China’s Hengrui Pharma and is aimed at both obstructive and non-obstructive HCM. That puts Braveheart on a collision course with Bristol Myers Squibb’s Camzyos, the established drug in the class. BHB-1893 is in Phase 3 testing in China, with global trials planned for late 2026 or early 2027.
A hot IPO week
Founded only in 2024 and led by CEO Travis Murdoch, Braveheart raised a $185 million Series A less than a year before going public. Its debut came amid a busy stretch for biotech: it was the 17th drugmaker to go public in 2026, and one of five biotechs pricing IPOs that week for more than $1 billion combined — a sign of renewed investor appetite, with median biotech IPO proceeds now around $300 million.