Biotech companies in Boston: 700 sites, 117 listed companies and a hospital research engine

This page is for job seekers, investors, partners and suppliers sizing up greater Boston's biotechs. The Census metro runs from Boston and Cambridge out to Worcester's edge and into southern New Hampshire, so the counts cover Waltham, Lexington, Watertown and the Route 128 suburbs as well as Kendall Square.

How many biotech companies are in Boston

County Business Patterns (CBP) 2023, Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH Metro Area (CBSA 14460), NAICS 541714 (biotech research and development) and 325414 (biological product manufacturing):

R&D labs dominate: 663 establishments and 33,420 employees, against 37 biologics plants with 5,423 employees. CBP counts establishments with paid employees, so a company with three buildings counts three times and a two-founder startup with no payroll doesn't count.

Where they are

The Census Bureau published the missing county employee totals but flagged them: the noise it adds to protect confidentiality moved each one by 5% or more. Middlesex, which takes in Cambridge, Waltham, Lexington, Watertown and Bedford, holds 72% of the establishments. Suffolk is mostly Boston itself, including the Seaport and Longwood.

By size

The withheld classes are suppressed in the manufacturing code. The R&D code on its own fills most of them: 94 labs with 5 to 9 employees, 13 with 250 to 499 and 4 with 1,000 or more. Boston's distinctive feature is the middle: 204 establishments have 20 to 99 employees, the size of a funded company with its own lab.

What the Census codes miss

The two codes cover biotech labs and biologics plants. Small-molecule discovery companies are often coded 541715 (other life-sciences R&D), drug plants 325412, diagnostics 325413, and contract testing labs 541380. Corporate headquarters are classed by function. A Cambridge company whose 300 employees work in an office and outsource the lab work may not be in either code.

The listed companies, by R&D spend

SEC EDGAR lists 117 listed companies with a Boston-area business address in SIC 2834 (pharmaceutical preparations, 83), 2836 (biological products, 32) and 8731 (commercial research, 2). The largest research budgets in their latest 10-Ks, all for 2025:

Employees are worldwide, as of 31 December 2025 unless dated. Charles River Laboratories of Wilmington, the contract research company (SIC 8731), reported $4,015.4 million of revenue and about 19,700 employees for its fiscal year ended 27 December 2025.

R&D per employee shows who outsources. Dyne spent about $1.54 million of R&D per employee, Praxis about $1.59 million and Kymera about $1.33 million (our calculation), against about $0.61 million at Vertex. A company spending well over $1 million per head buys most of its science from CROs, CDMOs and consultants. Check the 10-K before you rely on the ratio: R&D can include one-time license payments, which may explain Vor's $321.5 million with 76 staff.

The hospital research base

NIH RePORTER shows $3.13 billion of NIH awards to 194 organizations in the Boston metro in fiscal 2025 (October 2024 to September 2025), across 4,929 projects. The largest recipients are hospitals, not universities:

For-profit companies received 215 awards worth $181.8 million; 180 were small-business (SBIR or STTR) grants. Charles River was the largest company recipient ($18.6 million). Many startups license technology from these hospitals and institutes, so a startup's founders often show up in RePORTER years before the company does.

Manufacturing and cell supply

FDA's drug establishment file, where biologics makers other than blood and tissue banks register, lists 73 Boston-metro sites with manufacturing operations. They include Bristol-Myers Squibb in Devens, Genzyme in Framingham, ModernaTX in Norwood, Wyeth BioPharma in Andover, Lonza Biologics in Portsmouth, NH, MassBiologics in Boston, and Replimune and CRISPR Therapeutics in Framingham. FDA's cell and tissue registry lists 16 establishments registered for blood stem cell or peripheral blood mononuclear cell products, mostly hospital cell therapy labs plus suppliers such as AllCells in Quincy. Investigational-only manufacturing doesn't require registration, so most clinical-stage companies aren't listed.

How to shortlist

MassBio publishes a member directory (it reports more than 1,700 members) and runs a career center.

Selling to Boston biotechs

Worked example: a lab safety consultancy

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

Harborline Safety (harborline.example) runs biosafety and chemical safety programs for labs.

1. Pick the mid-sized labs. 261 establishments have 20 to 249 employees, large enough to need a formal program and small enough to lack a full-time safety team.
2. Do the arithmetic. Reaching 40% gives 104 conversations. If 10% book an $8,000 gap assessment, that's about 10 projects ($83,200), and if four become $36,000 retainers, $144,000 a year.
3. Use a trigger. A lease in a new building or a jump in headcount means new permits and training.

At this volume, the slow part is finding each company's lab operations lead. Bebop finds the companies and contacts and drafts the first email.

Subject: Your move to [building or street]

Hi [first name],

Congratulations on the new space at [address]. A lab move usually means new biosafety registrations and a refreshed training plan within the first 90 days.

We run safety programs for Cambridge and Waltham labs of 20 to 200 people, so your scientists can keep working while the paperwork gets done.

Worth a 15-minute call next week to compare your move checklist with ours?

[Your name]

For national context, see the largest biotech companies and the Massachusetts pharmaceutical market report.

Next step: see the statewide picture, including Worcester and the manufacturing towns, in biotech companies in Massachusetts.