The Platformisation of Biotech: Rentiership, Rhetoric and the Value of Orphans

In the pharmaceutical industry, a ‘platform’ biotech is a startup whose technology base can generate many therapeutic candidates, or on which other therapies can be built. Platform business models command high valuations from acquirers and deep tech venture capital, because the same intellectual property can be licensed or sold again and again.

This paper treats the platformisation of biotech as a valuation practice: a way of giving value to the firm itself rather than to its products. Drawing on critical studies of digital platforms, it examines the tensions around rentiership, rhetoric and value, using the case of startups that target orphan diseases first to prove their platform quickly under a generous regulatory regime.