XtalPi secures $15m to boost AI drug development and design offering
The digital drug discovery and development firm announced it had closed a Series B funding round of $15m (€12m) on Tuesday, with investors including Sequoia China, Google, and Tencent.
According to XtalPi – which helps companies identify promising candidates and improve drug design in preclinical stages – the investment will help develop computational models to boost its proprietary Intelligent Digital Drug Discovery and Development (ID4) offering.
The ID4 platform is driven by artificial intelligence (AI), quantum physics, and cloud computing.
Spokesperson Ruyu Wang told us the investment will also contribute to the construction of a “prediction-driven research lab that can conduct targeted smaller-scale experiments to test and verify its predictions that will be faster than current experiments.”
“This will further expedite the R&D process and increase researchers’ abilities to screen and rationally design the solid forms of drugs,” she added.
According to Wang, the project will benefit firms developing small molecule drugs looking to increase R&D rates, drug design, and the preclinical development process.
The company expects to see more growth in the firm’s technologies to help advance pharmaceutical innovation, while reducing time and cost, she told us.
Earlier this month, Sequoia China joined Google Ventures, Neptune Ventures and Oxford Sciences Innovation in funding Vaccitech – a vector-based vaccine tech firm developing a universal influenza vaccine.
