Sir Demis Hassabis has hailed a multi-billion-dollar investment in the startup he founded which was spun out ofGoogle DeepMind and focuses on leveraging AI to help drug discovery as a “massive vote of confidence”.
Isomorphic Labssaid it has raised$2.1bn in a Series B funding. The funding round was led by existing investor Thrive Capital, the US VC, with participation from existing backers Alphabet, Isomorphic’s parent company, and its venture captial unit, GV.
New investors include Singapore’sTemasek, Google’s growth fund arm CapitalG, and the UK Sovereign AI Fund.
Hassabis, CEO and founder of Isomorphic Labs, who also heads up Google’s AI offering, said: “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.
“Now that we have shown our approach is fundamentally sound, our focus is on scaling our technology to its full potential. Thiscapital injection allows us to build out our drug design engine at scale, driving us forward in our mission to solve all disease.”
Isomorphic Labs is built on software that DeepMind developed, including its Nobel Prize-winning AlphaFold, which predicts protein structures.
Isomorphic Labs is researching treatments for cancer and immune disorders.
Isomorphic Labs said the new funds will be geared towards the development and deployment of Isomorphic Labs’ AI drug design engine (IsoDDE), with the aim of speeding up andexpanding its pipeline of therapeutic programmes.
The funding would also be used to recruit top-tier AI, engineering, drug design, and clinical talent, it said. Isomorphic Labs raised $600m in May last year, marking its first external funding round.