Unnatural Products Raises $45M in Series B to Develop Macrocyclic Peptide Therapeutics
Unnatural Products is betting that “natural” has been holding drug discovery back more than it has been helping it. Turns out, the market agrees when there is real science behind the attitude. Unnatural Products just pulled in $45M in Series B funding, led by The Venture Collective, with argenx, Droia Ventures, and returning players Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, ARTIS Ventures, and First Spark Ventures doubling down. When the same capital keeps showing up, it is not loyalty. It is pattern recognition with a bankroll and a memory.
Credit where it is due. Cameron Pye, Co Founder and CEO, and Joshua Schwochert, Founder and scientific backbone, have been building this like people who understand that drug discovery is less a sprint and more a long chess game played in the dark. Add Simon Bailey, PhD, COO and President of R&D, and you get operational muscle meeting scientific intent without stepping on each other’s toes or slowing the tempo.
Let’s talk about the name for a second. Unnatural Products. It sounds like a warning label you would ignore at your own risk. In reality, it is a strategy hiding in plain sight. They are engineering macrocyclic peptides that behave like they studied both the biologics playbook and the small molecule handbook, then kept what worked. Selectivity meets permeability. Precision meets practicality. And yes, the quiet ambition here is oral delivery, which in biotech is the difference between inconvenience and adoption, between interest and scale.
The platform is where things start to separate. Parallel experimentation fused with machine learning is not decoration, it is infrastructure. While others are still feeling around in the molecular dark, this team is building a system that learns, iterates, and compounds insight. That is how you go after targets most companies label as “come back later” and still move forward with intent.
The partnerships tell their own story. Novartis, Merck, BridgeBio, argenx. That is not a guest list, that is validation under a microscope. Big pharma does not collaborate out of curiosity. They collaborate when the math starts making sense and the downside starts shrinking.
What stands out is how this company has moved through its funding lifecycle. A $6M seed led by ARTIS Ventures in 2019. A $32M Series A in 2023 led by Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and ARTIS. Now a $45M Series B in 2026. That progression is not noise. It is disciplined execution, layered trust, and a platform that keeps earning the next check without begging for attention.
The takeaway sits right there if you are paying attention. When you build something that makes previously “undruggable” targets feel negotiable, capital follows. Not because the story sounds good, but because the implications are hard to ignore once you see the pattern.
