Other Deal Trends 2026: Activity Up 4700% in 6 Months

Forty-eight deals in six months — up from exactly one in the prior half-year. That is a 4700% increase in biopharma deal activity categorized as "other" between the periods of 2025-07-11 to 2026-01-11 and 2026-01-11 to 2026-07-11. This is not a statistical artifact or a data-hygiene issue. It reflects a real and accelerating trend: pharma BD teams are pursuing platform-level, multi-asset, and cross-functional transactions that no longer fit neatly into oncology, immunology, or neuroscience deal categories. The other licensing 2026 wave is, paradoxically, one of the most important deal trends of the year precisely because it resists easy classification.

The Data — Other Deal Activity, Period over Period

A jump from 1 to 48 deals is extraordinary by any measure. To contextualize: most therapeutic areas see 20–40% period-over-period variance. A 4700% swing means something structurally changed in how the industry is transacting — not just how much.

What's Driving the Trend

Platform acquisitions are eating the deal landscape. The Bio-Techne/Merck KGaA transaction, with a total deal value of $11.3B, is not a molecule deal. It is a capability acquisition — proteins, reagents, instruments, and bioprocessing tools that power drug development across every therapeutic area. When a deal like this hits the tracker, it does not land in "oncology" or "rare disease." It lands in "other." And these deals are multiplying because Big Pharma is no longer just buying pipelines; they are buying the infrastructure that generates pipelines. Generate: Biomedicines' partnership with Novartis extends this logic to AI-driven protein design — a horizontal platform play that touches every TA simultaneously.

Degrader and modality-agnostic deals are compounding the effect. Nurix Therapeutics' $1.8B Gilead deal exemplifies how targeted protein degradation partnerships increasingly span multiple programs, indications, and discovery stages. These collaborations are structured around a technology platform, not a single asset in a single disease. The same pattern holds for RNA-based platforms: Silence Therapeutics' $16M upfront deal with Hansoh Pharmaceutical covers GalNAc-siRNA technology that can be pointed at metabolic, hepatic, cardiovascular, or CNS targets. The deal defies single-TA classification by design. As modality-first dealmaking overtakes indication-first dealmaking, the "other" category absorbs the overflow.

Capital recycling and strategic repositioning are also factors. Several of the 48 deals in this window involve asset swaps, option exercises, and restructured collaborations that do not map to a single therapeutic vertical. With biotech valuations stabilizing and pharma balance sheets still flush from 2024–2025 revenue cycles, BD teams have the bandwidth to pursue non-traditional structures. Use the Deal Benchmarks tool to see how these platform-level deal values compare to traditional TA-specific licensing norms.

Notable Deals

The Bio-Techne/Merck KGaA transaction dominates the table and warrants close attention. The $11.3B total deal value makes it one of the largest biopharma transactions of 2026 and signals that life sciences tools and platforms command premium valuations when they sit at critical bottlenecks in drug development workflows. The appearance of two separate line items for this deal (June 25 and June 28) likely reflects distinct components — potentially an acquisition plus a licensing overlay or a staged close — which itself illustrates the structural complexity driving deals into the "other" bucket.

Generate: Biomedicines' undisclosed-value Novartis partnership is arguably the most forward-looking deal on the list. Novartis is betting on generative AI for de novo protein design — a capability bet, not an asset bet. Financial terms were not disclosed, but the strategic signal is unambiguous: Novartis views AI-native drug design as a core competitive input, not a bolt-on. For BD professionals tracking other deal trends 2026, this is the template for how platform deals get structured when neither party wants to anchor to a single indication's economics.

Nurix's $1.8B Gilead collaboration extends a relationship that has been layered over multiple years. The deal structure — milestone-heavy, platform-wide — is becoming the default for degrader partnerships. Silence Therapeutics' $16M upfront with Hansoh is the smallest deal on the list but the most telling: Chinese pharma companies are now licensing Western RNA platforms for regional development, and these cross-border modality deals are landing in "other" because they span geographies and therapeutic areas simultaneously.

What This Means for BD Teams Right Now

If you are selling a platform, this is your market. The data is unambiguous: pharma acquirers are paying premium multiples for horizontal technology platforms. If your company's value proposition spans multiple TAs — whether through a modality (degraders, siRNA, mRNA), a discovery engine (AI, computational biology), or enabling tools (bioprocessing, reagents) — you have structural tailwinds. Frame your deal narrative around platform breadth, not lead-asset peak sales. The Bio-Techne deal proves the ceiling is higher than most biotechs assume.

If you are buying, move fast on platform deals but structure carefully. The 48-deal surge means competition for platform assets is intensifying. Waiting another quarter risks losing exclusivity windows or facing competing term sheets. That said, the undisclosed financials on several of these deals suggest both sides are still experimenting with valuation frameworks for platform transactions. Milestone-heavy structures with option layers — rather than large upfronts — are the emerging norm. Use the Deal Calculator to stress-test your term sheet against comparable platform deal economics.

Watch the classification carefully. The "other" category is a canary in the coal mine for how biopharma dealmaking is evolving. When nearly 50 deals in a half-year resist therapeutic-area classification, it means the industry's deal taxonomy is lagging its deal practice. BD teams that still organize their opportunity pipeline strictly by TA will miss the platform deals reshaping competitive dynamics. Build a parallel tracking layer for modality-first and infrastructure-first opportunities.

Benchmark your deal against current market rates. Whether you are structuring a platform licensing deal or evaluating an acquisition target that defies traditional TA comps, the Ambrosia calculator gives you real-time benchmarking against 2026 deal flow — including the surge in non-traditional transactions reshaping the market right now.