Alphabet's Isomorphic raises $600m for AI drug discovery

Isomorphic Labs has raised a whopping $600 million to refine its artificial intelligence-powered drug discovery engine, advance its pipeline, and expand its headcount in its first external funding round.

The start-up – which has emerged from Google parent Alphabet's DeepMind project and is led by DeepMind founder Sir Demis Hassabis – said the financing was led by Thrive Capital, with participation from GV, as well as Alphabet.

Isomorphic's technology platform has already generated a number of AI models that are being applied to the discovery of new medicines, and it already counts Eli Lilly and Novartis among pharma groups that are tapping into its expertise.

The London, UK-based company was set up in 2021 to develop DeepMind's AlphaFold engine that, in 2020, became the first to solve the tricky problem of predicting protein folding, unlocking new ways to research how diseases affect the body and develop new medicines that can modify the activity of disease-related proteins.

Now in its third iteration, the model can predict the structure and relationships not only of proteins, but "all of life's molecules," according to Isomorphic, which has used it and other technologies to establish a drug discovery portfolio that includes in-house candidates for cancer and immunological diseases.

"We're excited to bring together a top-tier investor group with deep AI and life sciences expertise as we aim to transform this industry through an interdisciplinary approach," said Hassabis.

"This funding will further turbocharge the development of our next-generation AI drug design engine, help us advance our own programmes into clinical development, and is a significant step forward towards our mission of one day solving all disease with the help of AI," he added.

Lilly and Novartis have collectively pledged almost $3 billion to their partnerships with Isomorphic signed last year, which included more than $80 million upfront, and in February the company announced that Novartis had expanded their alliance, adding three additional research programmes "on the same financial terms as the original agreement."

Commenting on the financing round, Thrive founder and chief executive Joshua Kushner said that Isomorphic "has earned a rare position to define a new age of drug discovery and design, and we are deeply inspired by their mission and the extraordinary progress they have made to date."