Biotech companies in Austin: a small, early-stage cluster around UT

This page is for job seekers, investors, partners and suppliers looking at biotech in Austin, and it's deliberately short: the strict biotech count here is small, so the useful work is separating biotech from the wider life sciences and health tech scene. The Census metro covers Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop and Caldwell counties, including Round Rock and San Marcos.

How many biotech companies are in Austin

County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023, Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX Metro Area (CBSA 12420), NAICS 541714 (biotech research and development) and 325414 (biological product manufacturing):

Williamson County's employee total was published but flagged: the Census Bureau's confidentiality noise moved it by 5% or more. The metro's size table isn't published at all, because the five biologics plants (73 employees between them) are too few to show. The 47 R&D labs are published in part: 29 have 1 to 4 employees, 4 have 5 to 9, 4 have 10 to 19, 6 have 20 to 49 and 3 have 100 to 249; the 50 to 99 and 250-plus classes are withheld.

The counts are of payroll establishments, not of companies. Average pay of $128,043 is well below the coastal clusters (San Diego's is $180,590), which fits a market of very small, early-stage labs.

Biotech versus life sciences

Opportunity Austin, the regional economic development group, says the area has "300+ companies in life sciences" and "24,000+ employees in life sciences", without dates. Those figures include medical device makers, diagnostics labs and suppliers that the two biotech codes leave out. Other activity the Census codes miss: drug discovery labs coded 541715, contract testing labs (541380), health tech software companies, and university research at UT Austin, which is classed as education.

Listed biotechs headquartered in Austin

SEC EDGAR lists eight listed companies with an Austin-metro business address, all in SIC 2834 (pharmaceutical preparations); none are in 2836 or 8731. Six give a local headquarters in their latest 10-K:

Calendar 2025, except Anebulo (year ended 30 June 2025). Cash is cash and cash equivalents as reported. Employees as of 31 December 2025 unless dated.

Savara's 10-K gives Langhorne, Pennsylvania, and Faeth Therapeutics' gives Rockville, Maryland, so both are left out even though EDGAR still shows Austin addresses. All six are drug developers with about $1 million of revenue or less and fewer than 100 employees, and together they spent $134.0 million on R&D (our sum). Rein and Genprex reported less cash than a year of their 2025 R&D, so financing news drives their plans.

Research and federal funding

NIH RePORTER shows $146.8 million of NIH awards to 20 Austin-metro organizations in fiscal 2025 (October 2024 to September 2025), across 288 projects. The University of Texas at Austin received $122.2 million of it (83%). Companies received 21 awards worth $18.6 million; the largest, $9.8 million, went to Dell Federal Systems in Round Rock, which isn't a biotech. Fourteen were small-business (SBIR or STTR) grants worth $7.4 million, including Via Therapeutics ($1.6 million) and Anebulo ($1.0 million).

FDA's registrations show little biologics manufacturing. Its cell and tissue registry lists three Austin establishments registered for blood stem cell or immune cell products (CTH BioSourcing, St. David's South Austin Medical Center and Versiti Blood Health's Beacon Biologics), and its drug establishment file lists 22 metro registrations, 15 with manufacturing operations, none of them a biologics plant by name. Investigational-only manufacturing doesn't require registration.

Finding Austin biotechs

1. Start with the industry group. BioAustinCTX, which calls itself the Central Texas life science industry organization, runs events (BioBash was scheduled for 29 October 2026) and a newsletter with a career corner.
2. Use the economic development map. Opportunity Austin's life sciences page links an ecosystem map that it says lists companies with their employee counts.
3. Check NIH RePORTER for UT Austin principal investigators with small-business partners; that's where the next startups show up first.
4. Read the 10-K for any listed company before you apply, invest or pitch: with headcounts of 10 to 85, one financing or one trial result changes everything.

Selling to Austin biotechs

Worked example: lab equipment leasing

Illustrative example. The firm, lease values and conversion rates are invented; the counts come from CBP 2023.

Pecan Lab Leasing (pecanlab.example) leases refurbished lab equipment to startups.

1. Pick the target. 33 of the 47 R&D labs have fewer than 10 employees, the stage when buying new equipment outright strains a seed budget.
2. Do the arithmetic. Reaching 25 and signing 6 leases at $2,500 a month is $180,000 a year of contracted revenue.
3. Time it. A new lease in an incubator or a seed round announcement is the moment a lab gets equipped.

In a market this small, a well-researched list of 30 accounts beats a purchased list of 300. Bebop researches each account and suggests who to contact and why.

For the national ranking, see the largest biotech companies; for the region's wider economy, companies in Austin.

Next step: compare the Texas Medical Center's market in biotech companies in Houston.