Key points
- BreezeBio is a California gene-therapy company backed by Eli Lilly. It wants to list on Korea's KOSDAQ instead of Nasdaq.
- The target is a 300 billion won ($217 million) minimum valuation, with a listing set for the first half of 2027.
- Three more foreign or Korean-founded startups, ETI, BuildBlock and MiMiBox, are working the same path with Korean underwriters.
On August 19, Hankyung reported that a small wave of foreign companies are now working with Korean brokerages to list on the Kosdaq instead of a US exchange. The most developed case is BreezeBio, a California gene-therapy company that spent a decade under a different name before a licensing deal with one of the biggest names in biotech gave it a reason to change it.
CEO Lee Geun-woo and COO Park Hyo-min founded the company in 2016 as GenEdit. Both are scientists out of UC Berkeley, and one trained under Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna. They built a gene-delivery platform called Nano Galaxy that carries gene therapies straight to specific cells, skipping the viruses and lipid particles most gene therapies still depend on.
That platform is what got Genentech's attention. The Roche subsidiary signed a licensing and research deal with the company in January 2024 worth up to $629 million in milestones and royalties. Sarepta Therapeutics signed a second licensing deal later, and Eli Lilly came in as an investor.
GenEdit became BreezeBio in February 2026. That's also the month it closed a $25 million pre-IPO round, about 36 billion won, with Yuanta Investment leading and Sequoia Capital and Korea Investment Partners among the backers. Total funding raised is now about $120 million.
Korea Investment & Securities is underwriting the Kosdaq listing. The company wants a technology evaluation done by the end of this year, with the listing itself to follow in the first half of 2027 at a minimum valuation of 300 billion won ($217 million).
CEO Lee explained the shift in ambition this way. "Now that we've built up the technology to deliver gene therapies to exact cells, we're developing treatments that will bring real change to patients," Lee said. "We're advancing from a delivery-platform company to a higher value-added therapeutics platform company," Lee added.
BreezeBio is not the only one making the trip. ETI, a US liquid-biopsy company working on early cancer detection from body fluids, has already signed Samsung Securities as lead underwriter. Shinhan Investment Securities picked up the mandate for BuildBlock, a Silicon Valley real estate investment platform with an office in Seoul's Yeouido district. And MiMiBox, the Korean-founded beauty commerce company behind brands like IM MEME and Pony Effect, is in the final stages of its own listing prep after building out from a San Francisco headquarters on Y Combinator backing.
Korea's exchange has done this once before this year. Ingenia Therapeutics became the first foreign biotech to list on the Kosdaq in five years when it debuted in July, underwritten by the same Samsung Securities now working with ETI. An investment banking industry official quoted in the Hankyung report was measured about what the new wave means. "It's positive for the diversity of market products, but local due diligence and the timeliness of disclosures need to be checked rigorously," the official said.
Sources:
- 한국경제, 해외 기업들, 잇따라 한국증시 상장 추진, on the four companies and their underwriters
- 바이오뉴스, 진에딧, 360억원 규모 프리 IPO 투자 유치 완료..."브리즈바이오"로 사명 변경, on the funding round and CEO quotes
Our earlier coverage:
Won figures are converted to US dollars at an exchange rate near 1,382.4 won to the dollar. Quotes from Korean-language sources are translated from Korean. This is not investment advice.
