Oncology investors are heading into a dense run of decisions, and the clearest view of what it costs comes from one company's accounts. Summit Therapeutics, which has no product revenue, reported a net loss of $1,079,586,000 for fiscal 2025, according to SEC-filed figures we have verified.1 For scale, Novocure, a company that already sells a cancer therapy, reported $184 million of revenue in a single quarter.4 Summit's loss for the year is far larger than that. The FDA has set November 14, 2026 as the decision date for Summit's ivonescimab application.2 That is the date the spending either starts to pay off or doesn't.
This piece starts with the checked numbers, then covers the rest of the sector. The dossier behind it comes from sources of very different reliability, and we say which is which.
What Summit's filings show
Every figure in this section comes from SEC filings and has been checked against them.
Summit reported zero revenue in fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2024.1 Its net loss was $614,928,000 in fiscal 2023, fell to $221,315,000 in fiscal 2024, then rose to $1,079,586,000 in fiscal 2025.1 Loss per share followed the same path: $0.99, then $0.31, then $1.44.1 The operating loss, which excludes non-operating items, was $609,650,000 in fiscal 2023 and $225,998,000 in fiscal 2024.1 Our dossier has no fiscal 2025 operating loss, so we do not estimate one.
Cash actually leaving the business is a smaller number than the headline loss. Operating cash flow was negative $76,760,000 in fiscal 2023, negative $142,106,000 in fiscal 2024 and negative $322,930,000 in fiscal 2025.1 The gap between loss and cash burn is large in every year, most of all in fiscal 2025, and the dossier does not say what accounts for it. We will not guess. Retail investors should treat the cash-flow line as the better guide to how long the money lasts, and the net loss as a figure that includes things the dossier does not explain.
Spending on equipment is tiny: capital expenditure was $128,000 in fiscal 2023, $139,000 in fiscal 2024 and $657,000 in fiscal 2025.1 The company is not building factories. The money is going into trials and operations. Research and development expense is in our dossier only for fiscal 2023, at $59,471,000.1 That is a small part of the fiscal 2023 operating loss of about $610 million, and the dossier does not explain the rest, so we draw no conclusion from it.
The cash balance moved sharply. Year-end cash was $71,425,000 in fiscal 2023, $104,862,000 in fiscal 2024 and $225,266,000 in fiscal 2025.1 Quarter by quarter it swung much more. It was $211,526,000 in the first quarter of 2025 and $297,872,000 in the second, then $238,554,000 in the third.1 In 2026 it was $106,515,000 at the end of the first quarter and $419,365,000 at the end of the second.1 A balance that jumps from about $107 million to about $419 million in one quarter, for a company with no revenue, points to new money coming in. Our dossier does not say from where, so we cannot tell you whether it was a share sale, a partnership payment or something else. The latest balance is larger than the $322,930,000 the company used in operations during all of fiscal 2025.1 Whether it covers the next year depends on spending we have not seen.
The calendar around ivonescimab
Summit's FDA application rests on results from the HARMONi trial, and the decision date is November 14, 2026.2 A drug company with no revenue and an FDA date is in an unusual position. An approval would put a product on sale for the first time, and the filings above show the cost already incurred. Our dossier contains no sales forecast, no price and no analyst target, and we will not supply them.
Other decisions are landing nearby. On October 9, the FDA approved Tecentriq and Tecentriq Hybreza, combined with a fluoropyrimidine and oxaliplatin, for adjuvant treatment of stage III dMMR colon cancer, based on the Phase III ATOMIC study.3 Moderna and Merck plan to present detailed intismeran results at the ESMO meeting on October 24 and to engage with regulators about possible filings.9 Our topic summary also lists ivonescimab combined with Datroway and Nurix's bexobrutideg among the combinations advancing.10 It gives no trial results for them.
Where the money is going: delivering the treatment
Not all the capital is chasing new molecules. Novocure said second-quarter 2026 revenue was $184 million, up 16% on a year earlier, driven by 18% growth in active patients.4 It reported a CE Mark for Optune Pax in locally advanced pancreatic cancer, with Germany the first EU market to launch, and more than 280 active patients on it by June 30, 2026.4 Frank Leonard said: “This was our strongest quarter to date, with record net revenues and active patients on therapy.”4 This is a company-issued press release, and it comes from a news feed where only 56% of 4,960 checked claims held up.4 The revenue and patient figures should be read as the company's own account until they are confirmed in filings.
Our topic summary also notes McKesson and CD&R's acquisition of Option Care Health as a sign of capital moving into oncology services and commercial delivery.5 The dossier carries no deal price, so we cannot say what was paid. It also does not say whether any index fund you hold owns these companies, and we will not invent a weighting. If you hold a broad fund, the dossier cannot tell you your exposure to any name here.
The contrast with Summit is the plain finding. One company has revenue growing at 16% a year and a stated path to profitability. The other has no revenue and a year of heavy losses, and it is waiting on one regulatory decision.
AI drug design: ambition, with weak sourcing
AstraZeneca's executives say AI-designed biologics and automated labs are the next productivity lever. Our evidence for that comes from one MIT Technology Review piece, in which Puja Sapra describes a “lab of the future”. She said: “Where a self-driving car uses sensors and models to navigate its environment, this system uses AI to make predictions, robotic systems to execute experiments, and instruments to generate data.”6 She also said: “Data is our differentiator.”6 On the limits, she said: “One of the hardest problems in de novo design is predicting whether a computationally generated molecule will be safe in the human body.”6 And she said: “With more autonomous systems, human oversight remains at the heart of this approach.”6
Here the reliability record matters. Our automated checks found that none of the 11 claims checked from this MIT Technology Review source held up.6 That is a small sample, but a 0% result is not a footnote. Treat these statements as a company's description of what it hopes to build, not as evidence that AI-designed drugs are cutting costs. The dossier has no figure for AstraZeneca's AI spending, no savings and no drug that reached patients faster. The idea is plausible. As of today it is unproven in our data.
Real-world evidence and Europe
Some of the sector's news is plain clinical progress. In Europe, the CHMP recommended Gilead's Trodelvy plus Keytruda for first-line PD-(L)1-positive metastatic triple-negative breast cancer.7 Evandro de Azambuja said such patients “need effective treatment options as early as possible in the course of their disease.”7 In Germany, the final MINT study of mogamulizumab in 109 patients across 18 centres reported a median time to next treatment of 14.9 months, a 62.4% best overall response rate and 20.2 months median progression-free survival.8 Both items come from the same news feed with the 56% record, so they are company announcements we have not independently confirmed.7,8
The talent market shows the same thing. Everest Medicines hired two former Moderna oncology translational leaders on October 9, Brandon Coder and Lakshmi Srinivasan.11,12 That suggests cancer-vaccine expertise is in demand, though two hires show only that.
What to watch
- November 14: the FDA decision on ivonescimab.2 Check Summit's next filing for cash, which was $419,365,000 at the end of the second quarter of 2026.1
- October 24: the ESMO presentation of detailed intismeran results.9
- Summit's next quarterly report: whether the cash balance holds or falls back, and what funded the second-quarter jump.1
- Novocure's next results: whether 16% revenue growth and 18% patient growth continue.4
- AI claims: look for a named drug, a dated milestone or a measured time saving. Statements alone do not count.6
The verified numbers show that one oncology bet is very expensive and has yet to pay anything back. They show a different company in the same sector collecting real revenue. They do not show which kind of company will earn more for its shareholders.
