Every January, San Francisco becomes a temporary capital of global health innovation. The pilgrimage is familiar. Leaders from biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, finance, policy, and technology arrive with packed calendars and sharpened priorities, drawn by the gravitational force of the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference (JPM).
Inside the Westin St. Francis, a carefully curated (invite-only) group of life science companies presents to an audience that shapes markets, valuations and strategy for the year ahead. It is the most visible stage in health innovation and remains so for good reason.
However, innovation has never been confined to a single ballroom. It was once clustered along the corridors of New Jersey’s research parks, then radiated west to the Bay Area, before stretching across the Golden Triangle of London, Cambridge, and Oxford, finding parallel intensity in Paris, Rehovot and accelerating across Asia, from China to Singapore and beyond. Discovery has always followed talent, capital, and curiosity – not hotel addresses.
A Tale of Two Meetings in One City
Biotech Showcase reflects that reality. Each January, companies arrive in San Francisco carrying science born far beyond the Bay Area and find a setting designed to recognize promise wherever it originates. The meeting has become a convergence point for a distributed industry, where the next breakthrough is just as likely to come from Beijing or Boston as from Silicon Valley or Singapore, and where sound science and partnership, not proximity, determine what advances.
Parallel to that marquee gathering, another meeting has quietly and persistently grown into an indispensable part of the week’s architecture. Now in its 18th year, the Biotech Showcase, co-produced by DEMYCOLTON and Informa, has become the gathering place where the broader biotech, pharma, and medical device ecosystems converge to drive the work that ultimately informs trade industry headlines. It is not an alternative to JPM; rather, it is the grassroots connective tissue that enables the rest of the week to function.
It’s Not the Place – It’s the Connections
“This meeting addresses a critical need for emerging biotech companies to be heard. We’re showcasing truly innovative companies, both as presenting companies and in our panel conversations. In fact, during one session, people walked in simply to hear what was new, the information they don’t hear elsewhere,” said Sara Jane Demy, Founder & CEO of Demy-Colton, one of the gathering’s two convenors. “We serve as the home for emerging and startup companies – seed-stage through Series A, B, and C, and small-cap. These are the companies developing the breakthrough therapies and technologies that will become the foundation of today’s science, leading to tomorrow’s therapies. We’re the innovation engine for the little guys,” she added.
When Biotech Showcase began almost two decades ago, its purpose was practical rather than aspirational. Many promising companies, mostly venture-backed, science-driven, and globally ambitious, were not on the JPM agenda. They still needed access to investors, strategic partners and business development leaders who were already flying into San Francisco for the “main show.” Biotech Showcase created a professional, disciplined, curated forum for those conversations to happen with intention rather than improvisation.
Dr. MaryAnne Rizk, head of Health AI, AWS, supports Ms. Demy’s words. “The Biotech Showcase is where the future of medicine is previewed, bringing together an ecosystem of trusted innovators to share the next decade of healthcare.”
As JPM grew in scale and influence from the Hambrecht & Quist Healthcare Conference, it also became more constrained by space, protocol, and precedent. Presentation slots were scarce. Visibility became concentrated. Meanwhile, the number of companies advancing meaningful science expanded exponentially. New modalities emerged. Platform technologies matured. Innovation globalized. The industry needed a setting that could absorb this growth without diluting seriousness or credibility.
Today, the contrast between the two meetings is less about size than about function. JPM remains the industry’s loudest signal, a place where established players outline direction and investors listen for cues and dropped hints.
San Francisco during JPM Healthcare Week has become a global meeting ground for life-science leaders. Eden Ben, CEO of Amorphical, arrived at Biotech Showcase with a clear purpose: “I’m here during JPM Week and Biotech Showcase to present the Amorphical proprietary platform addressing metabolic bone and inflammatory diseases. We’re engaging investors around encouraging clinical results in osteoporosis, Crohn’s disease, and pancreatic cancer, with the goal of securing strategic investment to advance these programs into Phase 2b.”
Biotech Showcase Evolved into A Go-To Setting
Biotech Showcase, by comparison, is quieter but no less consequential. With more than 3,000 attendees, including more than 1,000 investors, and hundreds of presenting companies from around the world, it has become the driving force of the week. There are more than 350 company presentations. Thousands of one-to-one meetings are scheduled in advance, not left to chance encounters in hotel lobbies. These are not symbolic conversations. They are the early architecture of partnerships, financing, and long-term collaborations.
What is striking is how intentionally this community has formed. A single profile does not define the companies that present at the Biotech Showcase. Some are early-stage and pre-clinical. Others are approaching pivotal trials or preparing for commercial transition. Many are international firms seeking a foothold in the U.S. market. Increasingly, they span disciplines that did not exist when the meeting began: AI-enabled discovery, data-driven trial design, diagnostics that blur the line between software and biology, and climate-adjacent technologies reshaping biomanufacturing and supply chains.
This community has lived through cycles together. It has seen exuberance give way to discipline, easy capital tighten into scrutiny, and promising science tested by unforgiving markets. During the pandemic, when in-person meetings were no longer possible, Biotech Showcase adapted, preserving its core function even as the format changed. When travel resumed after the COVID shutdown, there was a palpable recognition that these structured, face-to-face conversations were no longer a nice-to-have; they were essential.
Some gatherings that once anchored JPM week have shifted their center of gravity elsewhere, following the rise of new conference hubs and festival-style convenings. Biotech Showcase did not. It stayed rooted in San Francisco, aligned with the rhythm of JPM week, and doubled down on what it does best: creating order, access, and momentum for companies still earning their story.
In that sense, it has become the “other mega meeting” of the week, not because it competes for attention, but because it transmits the energy JPM generates and redistributes it across the ecosystem. Investors move fluidly between rooms. Business development leaders extend conversations that began elsewhere. Companies that may never stand at the Westin podium still find themselves in dialogue with mega partners who can change their trajectory.
What makes 2026 feel particularly distinct is the tone of the conversations unfolding inside Biotech Showcase. The industry is recalibrating. After years of volatility, there is a renewed emphasis on scientific rigor, capital efficiency, and partnerships built for durability rather than speed. Artificial intelligence is no longer presented as novelty; it is assumed, embedded, and evaluated for impact. Global health challenges, such as aging populations, the burden of chronic diseases, and climate-driven disruptions, are shaping what investors and innovators consider essential.
Less noise, and More Intent
In that environment, Biotech Showcase feels less like a workaround and more like an integral part of the infrastructure. It is where emerging companies can be evaluated on their merits rather than their market capitalization, allowing investors to see breadth without sacrificing depth. Where the future of health is assembled incrementally, through conversations that may never make headlines but ultimately shape outcomes.
JPM will always be the stage where the industry speaks to itself and the world. Biotech Showcase is where the industry listens, questions, and connects.
“We cover technology and therapeutics from A to Z, focusing on the earliest and most exciting stages of innovation, when the science is bold and the stakes are highest. This is also the most precarious phase, which is why visibility matters. Over the years, we’ve seen many of our companies graduate from this meeting to participate in the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. When they reach that stage, they no longer need us, but there is always a new generation of innovators stepping in to take their place,” reflects Ms. Demy.
Eighteen years in, its importance is no longer anecdotal. It is measurable in attendance, in business development meetings scheduled, in companies that return year after year, either because something meaningful happened the last time they were here or they believe the quality of attendees warrants their attention. It is evident in the way the community shows up not to be seen, but to engage.
That is why Biotech Showcase flourishes, not as a counterpoint to JPM, but as its indispensable counterpart.
