Funding a biotech in Belgium: milestones, funds, grants

A biotech is funded in successive rounds, each tied to a scientific or regulatory milestone. It burns cash for years before its first revenue, and combines seed funds, invests, private funds and non-dilutive grants. The choice of first investors, and the rights you give them, shape every round that follows.

I wanted to find out which of the funds financing companies in Wallonia and Brussels actually invest in biotech, at what stage and with what ticket. Not from the brochures: from what each player publishes itself. The survey dates from 15.10.2026. Its gaps say as much as its figures.

A biotech moves by milestones, and each milestone has a price

Funding follows the development of the asset, not the company's calendar. Each milestone cleared lowers the scientific risk and justifies a higher valuation for the next round. Each phase also costs more than the one before.

This table looks obvious. It is not, for a founder fresh out of the lab. Most of the funding plans I have been shown costed the next milestone. Almost none worked out who would pay for the one after.

Yet that is the real question. A biotech that raises enough to reach preclinical data, but has no investor able to follow on into the clinical round, ends up with good data and an empty bank account. The funding plan must therefore set out, from the first round, who will follow in the next.

Who funds biotech in Wallonia and Brussels?

I took the nine players this site follows and noted what each one publishes about biotech, stage and ticket. Taken from their websites on 15.10.2026.

Three players out of nine explicitly name biotech or life sciences: Theodorus, ORSA and Sambrinvest. Two others mention health or spin-offs. Four publish no ticket.

The first finding is geographic. A biotech founder in Liège, Namur or Mons does not have the same counterpart as one in Charleroi or Brussels. Invests (Walloon provincial investment companies) work within their province, and a biotech moving province to get closer to an investor is not a rare scenario.

The second finding concerns amounts. None of the published tickets exceeds €5M, and most cap at €2.5M. A clinical phase generally costs a great deal more. Local players therefore mainly fund seed and early phases; beyond that, they co-invest with larger specialist funds. That is why rounds bring several investors together.

Theodorus, the university fund

Theodorus is the seed fund linked to the ULB (Université libre de Bruxelles). It reports more than €70M under management, several funds including one evergreen (Theodorus I) and two closed-end funds of 12 to 14 years (Theodorus II and III). Its first ticket is €250,000 and it can go up to €2.5M; for Theodorus IV, the published range is €500,000 to €2.5M.

For a spin-off, the life of the closed-end funds matters. A 12-year fund that backs a preclinical biotech will have to exit before its term, however far the trials have progressed. The question to ask: how many years does the investing vehicle have left?

ORSA, the private fund rooted in Wallonia

ORSA publishes a dedicated path for funding a biotech project. It says it invests in drug development at seed and early stage, co-structures first rounds and stays on the board for scientific and strategic decisions. Its published ticket runs from €500,000 to €2,500,000. The fund describes itself as evergreen, with no imposed exit horizon, active since 1985, with more than €120M under management.

An evergreen fund has no hard deadline. On an asset whose trials can slip by several quarters, that is a practical point, not a sales line.

Sambrinvest, Noshaq and the other invests

Sambrinvest names life sciences among its priority sectors and reports nearly 300 SMEs in its portfolio and more than €200M under management. It publishes no ticket.

Noshaq, the Liège invest, publishes seven priority sectors and €120M of investments approved per year on average over the last five years, across all sectors. My survey does not capture the detail of those seven sectors: check on its website whether your project falls within them before the first contact. Namur Invest names health among its well-represented sectors. IMBC targets spin-offs among others.

Which non-dilutive grants are available to a biotech?

Non-dilutive funding gives away no share of the capital: grants, recoverable advances, prizes, research contracts. It does not replace equity rounds; it lightens them.

In Wallonia, the Region grants subsidies and recoverable advances for research. The mistake I see most often is this one: founders raising equity to fund research work that a regional grant could partly have covered. In Brussels, research and innovation funding falls to Innoviris; in Flanders, to VLAIO. Amounts and rates depend on the programme and the file, so I do not list them here.

The maths is simple. In percentages, it works like this: if a non-dilutive grant covers part of the milestone budget, the equity raise falls by the same amount, and so does the stake you give up. A worked example, not a real case. A biotech valued at €3M pre-money needs €1.5M to reach its milestone. With equity alone, the investor takes 1.5 / 4.5 = 33%. If a recoverable advance covers €500,000, the raise drops to €1M and the investor takes 1 / 4 = 25%. Eight points of equity kept by the founders, at the cost of an application file and a conditional repayment.

Five investor criteria, two of them underestimated

Five criteria come up in every biotech file, and a scientific founder almost always underestimates the last two.

Intellectual property is what blocks the most spin-offs. A patent filed in the university's name, with a licence to the company still under negotiation, makes the first round very hard. Settle it before you meet a fund.

Three habits, drawn from the files I have reviewed:

• size each round to reach the next milestone with several months to spare, because a trial slipping by a quarter is the norm;
• secure the intellectual property in the company's name before the first round;
• choose first investors able to follow on in later rounds, or to bring others in.

And three recurring mistakes:

• raising just enough to reach the milestone, which forces an emergency round at the slightest delay;
• granting very protective rights to the first investor, which will weigh on every later round;
• ignoring the non-dilutive funding available in your region.

The first round commits every round after it

This is the least visible part and the most expensive. Rights granted to the first investor (preference shares, anti-dilution, board seats) set the benchmark for later rounds. A new fund will ask for at least the same rights.

Take a worked example and look at what the clause says and what it costs you: a fund invested €1M at €10 per share, so 100,000 shares. The next round closes at €5 per share, because preclinical work ran late.

The extra 100,000 shares under a full ratchet come out of everyone else's stake, in practice the founders'. In biotech, where a down round after a trial delay is nothing unusual, this clause can cost more than the valuation itself.

A lead investor who knows how to build a syndicate, with other funds around it, matters as much as the amount it brings. With published tickets capped between €2.5M and €5M, no local player will fund clinical development alone. Whoever comes in first must be able to call in the next ones.

How is a biotech funded in Belgium, in practice?

By stacking three layers, in this order. First, non-dilutive grants and founders' money for the proof of concept. Next, a specialist seed fund or a private fund active in drug development, often alongside the provincial invest and business angels. The tax shelter makes their participation more attractive, within the limits set by the SPF Finances (the Belgian federal tax administration). Finally, for the clinic, larger specialist funds, Belgian or foreign, co-investing with the first ones.

The region where you are based mainly changes the second layer. In Wallonia, the provincial invest and Wallonie Entreprendre (the Walloon Region's public financing body), which itself has put €1 billion into the invests. In Brussels, finance&invest.brussels, which works alongside banks and private funds and also invests indirectly in venture capital funds. In Flanders, PMV, which this site does not cover in detail. A Brussels spin-off that moves its lab to Wallonia changes its public counterparts: that decision deserves to be taken with full knowledge, not for the sake of a single round.

The local players described here are listed with their terms in our ranking of SME funds. For round structuring and clauses, have the term sheet reviewed by a specialist lawyer before you sign. A biotech that negotiates its first round badly renegotiates it in every round after.