StoneWise Secures $100 Million in Series B and B+ Financing to Accelerate AI-Driven Drug Discovery with Dual-Engine Platform

On April 12, 2021, StoneWise, a platform technology company driving innovative drug R&D with artificial intelligence, announced the completion of its Series B+ and Series B financing rounds, raising a total of USD 100 million. The Series B+ round was co-led by the Greater Bay Area Joint Homeland Development Fund and Lightspeed China Partners, while the Series B round was led by Legend Capital. New investors CDH VGC (Innovation and Growth Fund) and Zhongding Capital joined the round, alongside existing investors Hillhouse Venture, SIG Asia Investments, Changling Capital, and Linear Capital, among others. In this financing round, all existing investors from StoneWise’s Series A and Series A+ rounds participated in pro-rata follow-on investments, with Hillhouse Venture making an oversubscribed follow-on investment. Leap Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor for this financing.

The financing will be primarily used to further attract top global talent, consolidate the industrialization achievements of the StoneWise AI platform, accelerate the iteration pace of StoneWise’s AI technological innovations, and enhance empowerment efficiency.

With a proven business model, a solid technological foundation, and an outstanding team, StoneWise completed four consecutive rounds of financing within the past year. Its investors included leading institutions from both the pharmaceutical and AI sectors, a rarity in the industry. This financing marks the successful acceleration of the industrial implementation of “AI platform-enabled small-molecule drug discovery,” driven by the data flywheel effect and powered by StoneWise’s dual-engine strategy of a “Molecular Design Platform + Knowledge Graph.”

Long development cycles, high risks, substantial investment requirements, and high failure rates constitute the dilemmas facing innovative drug R&D. AI-assisted drug development can help researchers improve the efficiency of preclinical drug discovery and reduce failure rates, and is considered to bring revolutionary changes to innovative drug R&D.

Founded in 2018, StoneWise is one of the first companies globally to focus its R&D efforts on AI-driven small molecule drug generation applications. StoneWise has been committed to building a world-leading R&D service platform for innovative small-molecule drugs, aiming to enhance success rates in key stages of new drug development, including hit discovery, hit-to-lead, lead optimization, and preclinical candidate selection. The company’s name, “StoneWise,” derives from the phrase “Gazing at the stars while keeping feet firmly on the ground.” StoneWise consistently upholds this philosophy in shaping its technological capabilities and collaborative ecosystem.

Early-stage drug discovery is a complex and systematic process, resulting from continuous trial and error guided by scientific logic. Statistical data indicate that the average development cycle for a new drug spans 15 years, with total costs reaching as high as $2.6 billion. The application of AI in new drug discovery has, to some extent, addressed the challenges facing pharmaceutical R&D, demonstrating significant potential within this trillion-dollar niche sector. In recent years, advances in AI tools and methodologies, the disclosure of proof-of-concept achievements in both academic and industrial settings, the frequent emergence of commercial collaborations, along with the entry of tech giants and heightened activity in capital markets, have propelled AI-driven drug development to the tipping point of industrialization.

StoneWise systematically empowers pharmaceutical R&D with AI, fostering collaborations through a dual-engine model driven by a “Molecular Design Platform + Knowledge Graph” to deeply understand R&D logic and client needs. StoneWise provides comprehensive, multi-level, and multidimensional support for early-stage drug development, encompassing ultra-high-throughput virtual screening, high-throughput precise docking, knowledge graphs, molecular generation and design, activity prediction, ADMET prediction, synthetic accessibility prediction, and customized models. By meticulously and creatively reimagining early-stage drug development processes from an AI perspective, the company enhances existing AI methods, invents novel AI algorithms specific to the pharmaceutical domain, and organically integrates these algorithms to harmonize diverse technical requirements within each stage.

Meanwhile, StoneWise has software-enabled its molecular design module to help drug molecule designers expand their design horizons. The cross-domain implementation of this software reflects the engineering capabilities of the technical team. This process involves numerous steps, including identifying appropriate entry points, ensuring seamless integration across stages, achieving a deep understanding of drug R&D needs and underlying technologies, facilitating interdisciplinary communication, and selecting appropriate algorithms and data structures. It is the result of multidisciplinary collaboration leveraging comprehensive knowledge.

Leveraging its profound accumulation of AI technology, a multidisciplinary team with a strong sense of mission and execution capabilities, and the trust of domestic and international partners, StoneWise has successfully validated and implemented its systematic AI-driven drug discovery platform across numerous projects over the past year. In multiple high-difficulty First-in-class or Fast-follow projects involving novel mechanisms or modalities, the company achieved breakthrough experimental results in a short timeframe. These accomplishments include addressing global challenges such as intrinsically disordered proteins, as well as delivering “star projects” that secured hundreds of millions of dollars in commercial returns for partners at early stages. These achievements fully demonstrate StoneWise’s technological leadership in AI-driven drug discovery. Based on these promising preliminary results, multiple collaborators have entered into more comprehensive cooperation agreements with StoneWise.

StoneWise’s molecular design software platform facilitates effective AI-driven human-computer interaction with medicinal chemists in large pharmaceutical companies and research institutions, thereby enhancing design efficiency. It has been procured by multiple top-tier research institutions and pharmaceutical enterprises. This is the first commercially deployed AI-based drug molecule design software in China.

Zhou Jielong, Founder of StoneWisestated: “This round of financing will enable StoneWise to better build composite teams, iterate its technology platform, and implement projects. On this basis, StoneWise can empower the early-stage development of drugs with more like-minded partners, accelerate the discovery of promising candidate compounds, promote the development of AI-driven drug R&D, and jointly expand the boundaries of life.”

Li Jiaqing, President of Legend Capitalstated: “Legend Capital has consistently focused on the deep integration of the healthcare industry and technology. We regard innovative drug R&D as the core driver of pharmaceutical industry development and a key area for the future implementation of AI+ solutions. We are optimistic about StoneWise’s ability to empower innovative drug R&D through technology and innovation, by integrating cutting-edge disciplines such as artificial intelligence, big data, medicinal chemistry, computational chemistry, structural biology, quantum chemistry, molecular dynamics, and clinical medicine to build a leading small-molecule innovative drug R&D service platform. Its core team is far ahead of the industry in terms of AI technological accumulation, strategic planning, and product implementation capabilities. We look forward to collaborating with StoneWise to advance the development of medical AI, promote the upgrading of the healthcare industry, and benefit more patients.”

Han Yan, Founding Partner of Lightspeed China“The team at StoneWise demonstrates cross-disciplinary innovation capabilities, making it the most rapidly implemented and product-solid team among China’s AI-driven drug discovery platforms that we have observed. As the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical R&D market, China presents optimistic growth prospects, with AI’s empowerment of new drug development being particularly prominent; the projected market size is in the trillions of dollars. Lightspeed remains bullish on the development potential of AI applications in drug discovery and has full confidence in StoneWise’s exceptional R&D capabilities and execution strength. We look forward to StoneWise delivering more innovative solutions to China’s drug discovery landscape, thereby facilitating breakthrough advancements in healthcare.”

Wang Mingyu, Senior Partner at CDH VGCIt stated: “The current new drug R&D industry is facing increasingly severe pain points, including prolonged development cycles, low success rates, and high R&D costs. Applying AI to new drug discovery can effectively break through these constraints. Compared with traditional methods, AI-driven approaches generate a wider diversity of drug compounds at lower costs and faster speeds. With the advancement of AI technology and the accumulation of relevant data, AI-enabled drug discovery has moved beyond proof-of-concept into the industrialization stage. Globally, multiple AI-discovered drugs have entered clinical trials within the past year. StoneWise’s AI drug discovery platform has gained recognition from numerous pharmaceutical companies and demonstrated excellent performance in wet-lab validation. We remain firmly optimistic about StoneWise’s prospects. Through the continuous efforts of its outstanding AI and drug discovery teams, StoneWise can consistently deliver high-quality candidate compounds to the new drug R&D industry, significantly enhancing the efficiency of preclinical drug development.”