Isomorphic Scores Biggest Venture Round of the Year to Advance AI Drug Pipeline
UK-based Alphabet spin out adds Thrive Capital as new venture backer in a $600m fundraise.
Netting $600m in its first funding round is an impressive achievement for any biopharma company, but London-based Isomorphic Labs’ huge series A round has come at time when worries about volatile markets and uncertainty around the impact of US healthcare policy have stalled hopes of a biotech sector rebound.
New York-based venture fund, Thrive Capital, led the funding round with additional capital added by Google Ventures and follow-on money from original investor Alphabet.
Given Isomorphics’ pedigree, which includes former Google DeepMind co-founder Sir Demis Hassabis as its CEO and ex-AstraZeneca executive vice-president Sir Menelas Pangalos as a scientific board advisor, it is perhaps less surprising that the group has managed to land the biggest fundraise of the year.
The $600m raised is also the second biggest venture round for an AI drug discovery company, after Xaira Therapeutics came out of stealth mode with a $1bn raise in April 2024.
In a statement, Hassabis said:
“This funding will further turbocharge the development of our next-generation AI drug design engine, help us advance our own programs into clinical development, and is a significant step forward towards our mission of one day solving all disease with the help of AI”
Isomorphic, which has yet to reveal any details of its pipeline, beyond stating its interest in oncology and immunology, has said previously that it is aiming to enter the clinic with its first drug candidate later this year. Some of the $600m raised will be used to recruit new staff, an increasingly difficult job given the competition for talent in AI-drug discovery.
Spinning Out
Isomorphic was spun out of Google’s Alphabet in 2021 and builds on the success of Google DeepMind’s Nobel Prize winning AlphaFold, which uses AI to predict the structure of proteins. Isomorphic had already gone beyond the promise of finding new proteins with the launch in May last year of AlphaFold 3, which predicts the structure of DNA and RNA, as well as small molecule ligands and ions. Isomorphic said at the time this would allow it to realise the next era of ‘digital biology’.
The AlphaFold 3 generative model is trained on molecular structural data within the world-wide Protein Data Bank, and according to Isomorphic can process over 99% of all known biomolecular complexes in the bank.
However, the launch was not without controversy after the model’s code was initially not made available to researchers, resulting in a protest letter signed by more than 1,000 scientists. As a result, an updated version of AlphaFold3, and its code, was released earlier this year.
Building Interest
Alongside its ongoing technology advances another factor that will have helped investors pour such a large sum of money into Isomorphic is its strategic collaborations with big pharma groups.
Last year Eli Lilly and Novartis inked respective upfront deals worth $45m and $37.5m to develop products. The deals could eventually be worth a combined $3bn if certain milestones and royalty targets are met.
While no details were given on the Lilly collaboration, Isomorphic revealed that the Novartis agreement would involve the discovery of three small molecule products in three undisclosed targets. Last month, Isomorphic announced it would be adding another three targets to the collaboration on the same terms as the original agreement.
Isomorphic’s fundraise is definitely an outlier in an increasingly tight venture capital pool, and while its origins and founders are bound to have had a hand in swaying investors, it is yet another sign of the growing interest in AI drug discovery.
