While biotech firms have comparative advantage in innovative and quick drug discoveries to big pharmaceutical companies, the so-called “valley of death,” or the negative-profit cleft is becoming deeper and longer. So what is the necessary research and development (R&D) investment of future successful biotech firms if their financial condition is negative profit in financial crisis related with coronavirus or real estate? We will use an open data source, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission's Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system database. The main finding obtained through the analysis of a Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo regression model suggests that fiscal year (FY)2008 negative-profit and FY2018 Star—the highest total shareholders’ equity values in FY2018 Pareto distribution—biotech firms’ R&D investment productivity was higher than that of FY2008 positive-profit and FY2018 Star counterparts. And there was a clear difference between would-be Star and would-be non-Star biotech firms in their R&D investment characteristics during financial crises.