Eleven AI-Driven Biopharma Companies Secure New Funding in May, Advancing Next-Gen Therapeutics and Platforms

According to data monitoring by Pharma Intelligence, in May 2024, a total of 11 AI pharmaceutical-related companies worldwide completed new rounds of financing, with a disclosed total amount of approximately 2.021 billion RMB.

Financing Overview

In May, two China-based AI pharmaceutical companies received new rounds of financing, respectively.Shanghai Biotin BiotechSecured Series A financing andTaizhou Xingputai BioSecured tens of millions of yuan in strategic financing.

Bench Biotech, incubated from the Institute of Immunochemistry at ShanghaiTech University, focuses on developing orally available small-molecule protein degraders. By leveraging AI machine learning models combined with high-throughput experimental data to guide drug design, the company currently has two molecular glue degrader pipelines that have entered clinical stages.

Another company, Xingpu Tai, is a peptide innovative drug developer initiated by Shengpu Zetai in 2019. Xingpu Tai integrates artificial intelligence for novel drug discovery.Technology and green polypeptide synthesis process, developed10More than one polypeptide raw material pharmaceutical products.

From a global perspective, the highest financing amount this month came from the United States.KariusKarius, Inc. Completes $100 Million Series C Financing. Karius is revolutionizing the medical diagnostics field with AI, breaking traditional speed barriers and reducing the risk of antibiotic resistance spread. The company aims to expand its AI-driven cfDNA liquid biopsy approach beyond infectious diseases.

In early-stage enterprises, founded by professors from New York UniversityOverT BioRaised $16 million in its first round of financing. OverT Bio is a data-driven company. Its core platform is used for searching genomes, endowing immune cells with new characteristics, and has also established similar high-throughput methods to discover new receptors and targets.

Another startup dedicated to AI-generated protein designNabla BioAnnounced the completion of a $26 million Series A financing round. On the same day, it also announced strategic partnerships related to drug development with three multinational pharmaceutical companies—AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Takeda—with upfront and milestone payments valued at over $550 million.

Moreover, not limited to the United States, this month Europe also saw relevant companies gain market favor. Located in the UK,LabGeniusFounded in 2012, it is an AI-platform-based protein therapy developer, primarily focusing on areas such as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. The company successfully secured $44.51 million in Series B financing.

From HungaryCompanyTurbineSecured a new round of financing. Turbine models how cancer works at the molecular level and uses artificial intelligence to test millions of potential drugs on it.

The following is a summary of financing:

Financing Event Details

Karius

Round: C Round

Amount: 100 million USD

Karius Announces Completion$100 millionSeries CFinancing, this round was led by Khosla Ventures, new investor 5AM Ventures, and Gilde Healthcare. New investors Seventure Partners and existing investors Softbank Vision Fund 2, General Catalyst, HBM Healthcare Investments, Blue Water Life Sciences, Innovation Endeavors, and Waycross Ventures also participated.

The Karius Test utilizes NGS technology and artificial intelligence to detect cfDNA fragments from over 1,250 pathogens, including bacteria, viruses, and fungi, in a single blood sample, accurately diagnosing infections that other existing technologies cannot identify.

Traditional methods are slower and may lead to the overuse of antibiotics, which is particularly dangerous for immunocompromised patients and exacerbates antimicrobial resistance. Precise identification of pathogens enables targeted treatment, minimizes the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics, and reduces the risk of spreading antibiotic resistance.

OverT Bio

Round: Angel Round

Amount: 16 million US dollars

OverT Bio Announces Completion$16 millionFirst round of financing. This round was led by ARTIS Ventures and Wing VC, with participation from Fusion Fund, OMX Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments, Gaingels, Civilization Ventures, Hawktail, and the Cancer Research Institute.

OverT Bio is a developer of tumor cell immunotherapy, committed to developing parallel gene screening, single-cell multi-omics, and synthetic biology platforms, combining cell engineering technology with big data methods to address unmet major medical needs in the solid tumor field.

Triomics

Round: Series A

Amount: 15 million US dollars

Triomics Announced the completion of a $15 million Series A financing round, with investors including Lightspeed, Nexus Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and Y Combinator.

Triomics, co-founded in 2021 by Sarim Khan, a former biotechnology researcher at MIT, and Hrituraj Singh, an artificial intelligence scientist at Adobe, leverages advancements in generative AI and large language models to extract data from electronic health records (EHR), enabling the identification of suitable clinical trials for cancer patients within minutes. Currently, Triomics' large model is actively being used or piloted by six cancer centers and hospitals.

Nabla Bio

Round: Series A

Amount: 26 million US dollars

Nabla Bio Announces $26 Million Series A Financing Led by Radical Ventures with Participation from All Existing Investors; Strategic Partnerships Established with AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Takeda

The company plans to use the raised funds to develop its integrated artificial intelligence (AI) and wet lab technologies for designing and developing highly developable, selective, and functionally active protein drugs, particularly targeting multi-pass transmembrane protein targets.

Prologue Medicines

Round: Unknown Round

Amount: 50 million US dollars

Flagship Pioneering, a bio-platform innovation company, announced the launch of Prologue Medicines, a company unlocking the therapeutic potential of viral proteomes to develop powerful new medicines. Flagship has initially committed $50 million to advance the company’s Decoding Evolutionary Logic of Variant Ensembles (DELVE)™ platform.

LabGenius

Round: B Round

Amount: 44.51 million US dollars

LabGenius Obtained$44.51 millionSeries BFinancing, invested by M Ventures, Octopus Ventures, LG Group, Atomico, Kindred Capital, Lux Capital, Obvious Ventures.

LabGeniusPrologue Medicines is an AI platform-based protein therapy developer founded in 2012. It is the first biotechnology company to utilize AI technology to develop next-generation protein therapies. The company primarily focuses on areas such as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology.

Turbine

Round: Unknown Round

Amount: Undisclosed

TurbineThe proprietary platform leverages the most advanced digital cell models in the world, combining cell behavior simulation technology and molecular biology to understand complex tumor mechanisms and design drugs targeting them.

ExpressionEdits

Round: Seed Round

Amount: 13 million US dollars

ExpressionEdits Enhancing Gene Expression with AI-Driven Endogenization Technology. This platform combines millions of bio-data points with ML algorithms to predict and prioritize key gene attributes, enabling automatic optimization of gene design.

Weave Bio

Round: Unknown Round

Amount: 10 million US dollars

The recent financing was co-led by Innovation Endeavors and Magnetic Ventures.

Weave Bio is developing an AI-native Regulatory Automation and Lifecycle Management (ReALM) platform for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.

The first fully launched product, AutoIND, accelerates the submission of Investigational New Drug (IND) applications by providing biopharmaceutical teams with a platform to quickly prepare and submit IND applications to the FDA.

Biaoxin Bio

Round: Series A

Amount: Undisclosed

Biaoxin BioMedTech (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. Announces Series A Financing Round Led by Huangpu Biomedical Industry Fund, with Participation from Yuemin Investment Fund, Nanwan BioBay, and Sinan Park Science.

Bionovogene is a biotechnology company incubated from the Institute of Immunochemistry at ShanghaiTech University, focusing on the development of oral protein degradation small molecule drugs.

Through high-throughput multi-dimensional experimental data, comprehensively apply AI-assisted machine learning models to summarize and guide drug design, and validate in wet labs.Further screening in the experiment has accumulated a wealth of proprietary knowledge on the structure-activity relationships of molecular glues.

Xingpu Tai Bio

Round: Strategic Financing

Amount: Tens of Millions of Yuan

Xingpu Tai Announces Completion of Tens of Millions of RMB in Strategic Financing, with the Round Jointly Invested by Leading Chinese Pharmaceutical Listed Companies Xingqi Eye Medicine, Renfu Medicine, Industrial Party Furre Medicine, and New Venture Capital Fund Purple Knight Capital Focused on the Peptide Field.

Xingpu TaiIt is an innovative peptide drug developer initiated by ChemPartner, an AI + peptide Contract Research, Development, and Manufacturing Organization (CRDMO) platform company, in 2019.It integrates AI-driven drug discovery technology with green peptide synthesis processes., has undertaken CDMO business for peptide innovative drugs from several well-known pharmaceutical companies both in China and abroad.