Novo Holdings invests into AI CRO ExScientia

While new investor Novo Holdings led the round, existing investors Evotec SE, Bristol Myers Squibb and GT Healthcare Capital also participated. According to the Oxford (UK)-based AI-specialist, whose Centaur Chemist Artificial Intelligence-powered platform currently has the potential to initiate up to 20 projects per year, the proceeds will be used to expand the existing pipeline and projects with further partners from Big Pharma and biotech. The machine learning and generative design platform, which was build within six years of research, automatically designs and prioritises novel small molecule compounds for synthesis. ExScienta currently has colloborations with Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GSK, Roche, Sanofi und Sumitomo Dainippon.

According to Evotec’s CEO Werner Lanthaler, the Hamburg-headquartered drug discovery CRO Evotec SE was the first strategic and operational investor in ExScientia and the companies will collaborate to realise further synergistic potential in innovative drug discovery. In the Series A and B rounds, Evotec put US$21m in equity money into ExScientia.

This investment highlights the increasing commitment to the potential of AI to transform drug discovery, said Prof. Andrew Hopkins, CEO and founder of ExScientia. ExScientia’s platform has been shown to be capable of accelerating the time between the start of an idea and a viable new drug candidate for patients.