TandemAI gets rolling with $35m in financing

TandemAI is based out of Suzhou, China, and also has an office in New York, US, and the startup managed to raise money from financial organizations from both China and the US.

In total, the company secured $35m (€33m) in a Series A financing round, with the lead investor being Qiming Venture Partners, which was joined by OrbiMed, Eight Roads Ventures, and F Prime Capital in investing into the technology firm.

TandemAI outlined that the financing would be used to expand its drug discovery service platform. The platform itself is an AI and physics-based drug discovery tool, supported by a super-computing infrastructure, and a fully integrated wet lab, the company stated.

The Series A financing adds to the previous seed money TandemAI managed at the end of 2021, when the company raised $25m. At the time, the company stated that it would use the money to set up wet labs and computing clusters in China.

At present, TandemAI states that its platform makes the drug discovery process more efficient and less random, and offers an approach that combines discovery and reporting in a ‘client-friendly’ experience.

The platform currently offers services for pre-clinical candidates, with the company having the goal of improving the success rate of pre-clinical therapeutic candidates.

“Innovations continue to emerge in the space of AI drug discovery, and TandemAI is working to address the significant barriers to both accessing the most advanced computational tools and integrating them with biological and chemistry expertise. The rapid growth of TandemAI’s client base since its founding 15 months ago reflects that interest and the potential value the company’s approach brings to accelerating drug discovery,” said Kan Chen, partner at Qiming Venture Partners.

As a result of Qiming’s investment in the company, Chen will join the TandemAI board of directors.

Another investor in the company, Eight Roads, and its managing partner, Jarlon Tsang, described how the company is able to offer discovery and computational tools to biotechs at any stage and any scale, which formed part of the reasoning behind the investment firm’s decision to back the startup.

TandemAI is one company among many​ that are latching onto the potential for AI to revolutionize the drug discovery process. The interest in the area extends up to the largest companies in the industry, with Pfizer​ and Sanofi​ announcing AI drug discovery partnerships during 2022.