Isomorphic Labs, an AI-first drug design and development company founded by DeepMind founder Sir Demis Hassabis, has raised £1.6 billion in Series B funding.
The latest round of investment will accelerate the UK company’s evolution from pioneering novel AI models to applying them at scale.
The financing round is led by Thrive Capital, and includes participation from existing backers Alphabet and GV alongside new investors MGX, Temasek, CapitalG, and the UK Sovereign AI Fund, significantly expanding Isomorphic Labs’ global capital base.
The new capital will be used for the continued development and deployment of Isomorphic Labs’ AI drug design engine (IsoDDE), accelerating and expanding its pipeline of therapeutic programs towards the clinic.
Additionally, the funding will support its existing hiring targets by integrating AI, engineering, drug design and clinical talent across its sites.
“This funding round is a massive vote of confidence from a diverse group of top-tier international investors in our AI-first approach to drug design and development,” said CEO Sir Demis.
“Now that we have shown our approach is fundamentally sound, our focus is on scaling our technology to its full potential. This capital injection allows us to build out our drug design engine at scale, driving us forward in our mission to solve all disease.”
Isomorphic Labs has developed a number of proprietary breakthrough AI models that together form its unified AI drug design engine that works across multiple therapeutic areas and drug modalities.
It recently published a subset of the powerful and expansive capabilities of IsoDDE, highlighting its predictive accuracy and introducing new capabilities which bridge the gap between structure prediction and real-world drug discovery.
IsoDDE offers a scalable foundation for AI drug design, providing the predictive fidelity required to navigate novel biological systems with unprecedented accuracy.
The firm has a strong portfolio of strategic partnerships with industry leaders like Novartis, Lilly and Johnson & Johnson.
Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer at Alphabet and Google, said: “The application of AI in healthcare offers a profound opportunity.
“Isomorphic Labs has already made extraordinary progress in harnessing AI to accelerate drug discovery, and we are excited by this momentum and the early promise of the technology platform.
“This trajectory is encouraging, and this funding will be used to accelerate the work and bring important interventions to market with greater speed.”
Max Jaderberg, president of Isomorphic Labs, added: “This milestone is built on the strength of our AI drug design engine, which has already proven its worth across our internal programs by hitting key milestones and identifying viable candidates with unprecedented speed.
“Our drug design engine works, and it’s giving us a repeatable way to design new medicines for a wide range of diseases, building a future of medicine that was previously out of reach.”
Joshua Kushner, founder and CEO of Thrive Capital, added: “We are humbled to have the opportunity to continue to support Isomorphic’s mission to solve all disease.
“Over the past year, our conviction in the team has only deepened as they’ve made significant progress in building a unified AI drug design engine to define a new age of drug discovery and design.”
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Dr Krishna Yeshwant, managing partner at GV, said: “The calibre of the team Isomorphic has assembled is unmatched, and they continue to validate our belief that this is the premier group at the intersection of AI and drug discovery.
“We have strong confidence in Isomorphic. We believe their approach can create important medicines that will be better understood earlier in the process, pushing the boundaries of what’s been possible before.”