Private Company Edition: Playground’s third fund has $410m for tech, including biotech, Pivotal Life Sciences closed its second fund with $389m and Chugai will invest $200m through its new fund. Also, Tome launched with $213m, Sudo raised a $116m series B and Odyssey closed a $101m in series C.

When the traditional fundraising window closes and clinical, regulatory or commercial success eludes, other routes to raise cash emerge. But these have also become more scarce recently, leaving all-stock consolidations.

Moderna and Life Edit will team up to develop transformative or curative therapies for challenging genetic diseases. Erytech and Pherecydes unveil plan to merge and extend runway into 2024.

BioNTech's $270m Series A round was the biggest start-up financing in January, but sizeable rounds also were raised by Centrexion ($67m), Eureka ($60m) and Pandion ($58m).