NextStar Heads to BIO 2026
Every year, the BIO International Convention draws the people most responsible for shaping the future of human health into one place. This June, that place is San Diego, and NextStar Venture Partners Managing Director Deborah Magid will be there.
Event Details
What: BIO International Convention 2026
Hosted by: Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO)
Where: San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, California
When: June 22-25, 2026
The BIO International Convention is the largest and most comprehensive event for biotechnology, representing the full ecosystem of biotech with 20,000 industry leaders from across the globe. The program spans 130 sessions across 18 focus areas, covering everything from therapeutic development and clinical strategy to business development, global market opportunities, and the role of emerging technologies in accelerating the path from discovery to patient impact.
Why This Moment in Biotech Demands Attention
The life sciences sector is undergoing a structural shift, and the data makes that unmistakably clear. According to Silicon Valley Bank’s H1 2026 Healthcare Investments and Exits Report, AI now represents 46 percent of all healthcare investment. Nearly half of every dollar flowing into this sector is chasing the intersection of artificial intelligence and life sciences. That is not a trend. That is a reorientation of where the industry believes its most important problems will be solved.
The implications for how companies are built, how drugs are discovered, and how healthcare is delivered are profound. AI is accelerating target identification, reshaping clinical trial design, enabling real-time analytics, and compressing timelines that have historically taken years. For founders building at this intersection, and for the investors evaluating them, the questions being asked today at the seed and Series A stage look fundamentally different from what they looked like five years ago.
What NextStar Is Looking For in San Diego
Health is one of NextStar’s core investment sectors, and BIO 2026 sits squarely at the intersection of everything we are focused on. We invest in AI for critical industries because the stakes in those industries demand solutions that actually work, at scale, under real-world conditions. Healthcare is the clearest example of that principle in practice. The founders we are most interested in are the ones translating genuine scientific insight into products that can navigate the complexity of clinical validation, regulatory scrutiny, and commercial adoption without losing the thread of what made the science compelling in the first place.
BIO’s proprietary partnering platform makes it one of the most efficient environments in the industry for connecting with founders and co-investors across the full spectrum of life sciences activity. We intend to make the most of it.
Connect With Deborah in San Diego
If you are attending BIO 2026 and would like to connect, reach out to Deborah directly on LinkedIn to arrange time in San Diego.
