Biotech cash: why three quarters have less than twelve months of visibility

The Panorama France HealthTech 2026, published by France Biotech together with EY and Bpifrance, shows that 41% of French HealthTech companies reported cash difficulties at the end of 2025, and that their visibility remains short: 19% of companies have only three months of cash or less, while three quarters have less than twelve, for an average horizon of between six and twelve months.

This pressure is no accident. Since the market slowdown of 2023, capital has become scarcer and investors more selective, to the point where half of HealthTech companies struggle to raise funding and a fundraise now takes around ten months from first contact to signing. The problem is that, with nine or ten months of runway, a company often has to launch its raise at the very moment it discovers it needs one, leaving no room to maneuver.

The cost of this short-sightedness is very concrete: 89% of companies facing funding difficulties believe it delays their R&D. A biotech does not die from a lack of science alone; it often fails because a decision was made too late on the basis of a fragile model, and it takes only a mistimed hire or a production batch launched too early to wipe out several months of runway, sometimes irreversibly.

You limit this risk by no longer treating runway as a one-off calculation pulled together as the board meeting approaches. The cash-out date should be a living number, updated continuously and tied to operational decisions, so that a trial delay or a hire immediately translates into months gained or lost, and then shared in a single definition across the CEO, the finance team, and investors—otherwise everyone ends up defending their own number around the table.

This is exactly what a financial steering cockpit does: it turns a passive twelve-month visibility into a horizon you genuinely steer, where you anticipate the next financing milestone instead of discovering it.

Sources

Panorama France HealthTech 2026, France Biotech (with EY and Bpifrance), February 2026.
Panorama France HealthTech (EY) · Eurasanté, "runway risk becomes an investment issue" · BioSpace, "biotech still has a cash problem"