Alphabet's subsidiary, AI, a pharmaceutical R&D company driven by Isomorphic Labs, is seeking a new round of financing, with a valuation of at least $40 billion, just five months after its last round of funding.
According to people familiar with the matter, the financing negotiations are still in their early stages, and the valuation range could be as high as $50 billion. These individuals stated that the financing has not yet been completed, and related details may still change. Isomorphic Labs has not responded to requests for comment.
If the financing is successfully completed, this will mark a significant leap in the valuation of Isomorphic Labs within just a few months, further highlighting the capital market's high enthusiasm for the pharmaceutical sector represented by AI.
Making another move within five months, the pace of financing has clearly accelerated.
Earlier this year, Isomorphic Labs just completed a $2.1 billion Series B financing round. It is reported that at that time, Alphabet provided "a significant portion" of the funds for this financing round. The company's CEO, Demis Hassabis, refused to disclose the shareholding percentage of Alphabet and the company's valuation during the Series B financing.
Now, just five months after completing its Series B financing, Isomorphic Labs has once again initiated a new round of financing negotiations, with a target valuation that has significantly increased from the previous round. Such a rapid pace of financing is quite rare in the industry.
DeepMind Gene Enhancement, AlphaFold Laying the Foundation for Core Competitiveness
Isomorphic Labs became independent from DeepMind in 2021, with its headquarters located in London. Its core mission is to deeply apply AI technology to drug development based on the breakthrough protein folding model AlphaFold developed by DeepMind.
Demis Hassabis previously served as the Chief Executive Officer of DeepMind for a long time. In August this year, he announced his transition to become the Chairman of DeepMind, and at the same time took on the role of Chief Scientist for Alphabet. He also continues to hold the position of Isomorphic Labs CEO. This arrangement allows him to play a key bridging role between the overall AI strategy of Alphabet and the commercialization of Isomorphic Labs.
With major pharmaceutical companies as partners, our in-house R&D pipeline is also advancing in parallel.
In terms of commercialization, Isomorphic Labs has established partnerships with several global top pharmaceutical companies, including Eli Lilly ( Eli Lilly & Co ) and Novartis ( Novartis AG ). The research and development focus is on the fields of cancer and immune diseases.
The company's business model encompasses two approaches: on one hand, it provides AI drug development models to pharmaceutical companies, empowering their R&D processes; on the other hand, Isomorphic Labs is also actively pursuing its own internal design and development of drug pipelines in order to seek a higher position in the value chain.
AI The prospects for pharmaceuticals are broad, but the commercialization process remains a challenge.
Despite the continuous surge in capital enthusiasm, the commercialization process of the AI pharmaceutical sector still faces practical challenges. Currently, there are few projects in the field of AI drug research and development that have progressed to the clinical trial stage, and no AI drugs developed have actually entered the market yet.
Isomorphic Labs is facing competitive pressures from multiple parties. OpenAI has released a specialized model for life science research this year, and numerous startups as well as tech giants are also accelerating their efforts in this field.
Hassabis has publicly stated that its goal is to compress the new drug development cycle from several years to just a few months. If this vision can be realized, it will have a profound impact on the global pharmaceutical industry – but judging from the current overall progress of the industry, the achievement of this goal still needs to be tested by time.
