Cash runway is how long a company can keep paying for itself before the money runs out, if nothing changes. It is the single most useful number to have in your head when a share price has fallen a long way and you are trying to work out whether you are looking at a bargain or at something on its way to zero.
It is also arithmetic you can do yourself in about twenty seconds, from two figures that every US-listed company has to publish.
The formula
Cash runway is cash divided by burn:
Cash runway, in one line
runway in months = (cash and equivalents ÷ annual cash burn) × 12
"Cash" is what sits on the balance sheet: cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. "Burn" is what the company actually consumed over the last twelve months - operating cash flow less capital expenditure, which is free cash flow with the sign flipped.
A real one, worked through
Inovio Pharmaceuticals (INO)
In its filing for the period ending 30 June 2026, Inovio reported $36.7M in cash and short-term investments. Over the previous twelve months it burned $88.9M.
$36.7M ÷ $88.9M = 0.41 years → about 5 months
Five months of runway on a company whose research programmes run for years. That is why its filings carry a going-concern warning, and it is why the company has been issuing stock: the share count rose about 95% over the same year. See the full INO breakdown.
Why the number moves
Runway is a snapshot, not a countdown clock, and three things move it constantly:
- New money. An equity raise, a credit facility or a licensing payment can add a year of runway overnight. This is the most common reason a company with three months of cash is still trading a year later.
- Cuts. Companies in trouble cut staff and shelve programmes, which lowers burn and stretches the same cash further. A falling burn rate is genuinely good news.
- Lumpy quarters. A single large payment - a legal settlement, a milestone, a tax refund - can distort a twelve-month burn figure in either direction.
So treat runway as a measure of pressure rather than a prediction. A company with four months of cash is not going to fail in four months. It is going to have to do something, and what it does next is usually expensive for existing shareholders.
What counts as short
The twelve-month line is the one that matters legally. Under US accounting standards, management has to assess whether there is substantial doubt about the company continuing as a going concern for twelve months from the filing date. If the cash does not stretch that far and there is no committed funding, that doubt has to be disclosed in the filing itself.
That gives you a rough scale:
- Under 6 months. Severe. Expect a raise, an asset sale, or an emergency.
- 6 to 12 months. Pressured. A raise is likely, and likely on bad terms.
- 12 to 24 months. Workable, if burn is falling.
- Over 24 months, or free cash flow positive. Runway stops being the interesting question.
Companies with the least runway, at the time of writing
Every figure below is computed from the company's own SEC filings, and every one of these companies has separately told the SEC there is substantial doubt it can continue as a going concern. This list changes as new filings land - some of these will have raised money by the time you read this, and some will not have survived. The stamp says when it was last rebuilt.
As at 21 August 2026, 230 of the 466 companies on Survival Watch had under six months of estimated runway. The shortest are listed here.
| Company | Estimated runway | Cash reported | Annual burn |
|---|---|---|---|
| GITSGlobal Interactive Technologies, Inc. | Under 1 mo | $360 | $1.3M |
| CETYClean Energy Technologies, Inc. | Under 1 mo | $42K | $10.3M |
| ESLAEstrella Immunopharma, Inc. | Under 1 mo | $100K | $17.0M |
| POLAPolar Power, Inc. | Under 1 mo | $27K | $4.2M |
| ABVCABVC BioPharma, Inc. | Under 1 mo | $94K | $12.4M |
| RAINRain Enhancement Technologies Holdco, Inc. | Under 1 mo | $33K | $2.9M |
| ATPCAgape ATP Corporation | Under 1 mo | $45K | $3.3M |
| OSTXOS Therapies Incorporated | Under 1 mo | $205K | $14.7M |
| RTBRTB Digital, Inc. | Under 1 mo | $492K | $30.4M |
| FLYEFly-E Group, Inc. | Under 1 mo | $265K | $13.9M |
Where this breaks down
Cash runway is meaningless for a bank or an insurer, whose balance sheets are built to hold other people's money, and it is misleading for any company that generates cash rather than consuming it - dividing by a negative burn rate produces a number, but not a useful one. It also depends on the filing being recent: a runway computed from a balance sheet that is five months old has already spent five months of the cash it counts.
Next: what burn rate actually measures, or how dilution shrinks your slice.