Atomwise Secures $123 Million Series B Funding to Advance AI-Driven Drug Discovery Platform and Expand $5.5 Billion Collaborative Pipeline

As a leading enterprise in AI-driven small molecule discovery, Atomwise will leverage this round of investment to further expand its AI technology platform and team. The company will utilize the funding to establish its own internal pipeline and continue to build a portfolio of joint ventures with leading researchers using AtomNet® for drug discovery, thereby advancing high-potential drug molecules. Atomwise has previously established multiple joint ventures using this model, such as X-37, Atropos Therapeutics, Theia Biosciences, and vAIrus. The company also plans to continue expanding collaborations with its partners, which currently include pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lilly, Bayer, Hansoh Pharmaceutical, and BridgeBio Therapeutics, as well as emerging biotechnology companies like StemoniX and SEngine Precision Medicine. To date, Atomwise has signed co-development agreements with corporate partners valued at approximately $5.5 billion.

“Over the past three years, AtomNet® has successfully identified more small-molecule hit compounds against difficult-to-drug targets than any other AI drug discovery platform,” said Abraham Heifetz, CEO and Co-Founder of Atomwise. “With the support of new and existing investment partners, we will be able to leverage this capability to develop our own pipeline of small-molecule drugs, further expand our joint venture portfolio, and realize our vision of creating better medicines to improve the lives of billions of people.”

Abraham Heifets, CEO and Co-founder of Atomwise

Atomwise created the first convolutional neural network (CNN) for drug discovery and has continuously developed and improved its AI-driven drug discovery technologies since its founding in 2012. The company’s AI technology has been adopted by academic researchers and drug developers at institutions worldwide, including top-100 pharmaceutical companies and emerging biotechnology firms. To date, Atomwise has provided its AI technology for more than 750 academic research collaborations, addressed over 600 disease targets, and partnered with leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to rapidly design new drugs at scale for “undruggable targets.”

Through these academic collaborations, Atomwise has enriched its AtomNet® technology with experimental data and conducted the largest molecular screening in human history—the library of molecules now used for virtual screening encompasses over 16 billion compounds. With the continuous application of AtomNet® in research settings, Atomwise has acquired valuable experimental data covering a broader range of drug targets, homology modeling methods, protein types, and disease areas than any other AI platform. The company currently holds 19 granted patents, and together with its partners, has filed 17 patent applications and published multiple peer-reviewed papers. Currently, Atomwise is actively advancing 285 drug discovery collaboration projects with leading universities worldwide. For broad-spectrum therapies against COVID-19, the company recently announced 15 simultaneous collaborations with different universities, aiming to develop anti-COVID drugs based on 15 distinct novel mechanisms of action.