Google’s A.I. is Isomorphic Labs. Drug Business Raises money from Thrive
Over the last 12 months, Google’s efforts to use artificial intelligence to accelerate drug design have achieved breakthroughs in mimicking human biology and won its top scientists the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Now Isomorphic Labs, the division within the software giant meant to develop and commercialize the technology, is taking another big step: raising money from an outside investor.
Isomorphic announced on Monday that it had raised $600 million, led by Thrive Capital, the venture capital firm that has bet big on A.I. OpenAI is one of the companies that have invested. Alphabet and GV, Google’s venture capital arm both invested. The software was developed by DeepMind in London. That includes AlphaFold, which can predict the structure of millions of proteins and more.
AlphaFold, which in its third iteration can now predict the complex behavior of DNA and RNA, has promised to slash the development time of new drugs. Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper of DeepMind shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year for their promise. Mr. Hassabis says the goal is to eventually conduct most of the drug discovery process via computers, rather than traditional labs that require biological materials, strict safety requirements — and lots of time. In an interview, Mr. Hassabis stated that “there is only one most beneficial application of A.I. He added, “Our mission, one day, is to solve all disease” with A.I.
Isomorphic is researching potential treatments, including those focused on cancer and immune disorders. Last year, it signed research partnerships with two major drug makers, Eli Lilly and Novartis, that could yield billions in payouts via promising drugs breakthroughs.
But as with many things related to A.I., the work, and the hiring of top research talent to perform it, is expensive. According to Mr. Hassabis, bringing in an outside partner was a long-term possibility. But he added that he had wanted a backer fixed on the long term that was also deeply focused on life sciences.
The additional money will help Isomorphic expand its stable of research models like AlphaFold, as well as recruit top talent across scientific disciplines.
“The ambition of the company is to be a full stack life science company, so that requires more capital to create more drugs while also investing in the technology platform,” said Vince Hankes, a Thrive partner who has led many of the firm’s A.I. investments.
Mr. Hassabis said he was selective about Isomorphic’s partners. Formal talks with Thrive were held over a period of months. Lately, the focus has been on A.I. companies, including leading a recent round in OpenAI that nearly doubled its valuation to $157 billion, as well as the analytics provider Databricks and the programming start-up Anysphere.
“Our hope is that A.I. “Isomorphic is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in small-molecule drug discovery.” “Isomorphic is pushing the boundaries of what is possible in small-molecule drug discovery.”
Over the next year or so, Isomorphic hopes to have made more breakthroughs in computational models like AlphaFold and perhaps have drug candidates get close to preclinical trials, Mr. Hassabis said.
Isomorphic will probably raise money from more outside investors, he added. The goal is for the company to be an independent business.
“This will be one of the most consequential companies around,” he said. “We want to make it a real powerhouse within the industry.”
