Biotech & Health

Biotech & Health Google Venture Capital

Isomorphic Labs Secures $600M to Accelerate AI-Powered Drug Discovery

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Chris McKay• March 31, 2025 • 2 min read

AI-first drug design company Isomorphic Labs has raised $600 million in its first external funding round, led by Thrive Capital, to advance its AI drug design engine and therapeutic programs.

NVIDIA Research Biotech & Health

NVIDIA and Arc Institute Introduce Evo 2, A State of the Art Foundation Model for Biology

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Chris McKay• February 19, 2025 • 2 min read

The Arc Institute and NVIDIA unveil Evo 2, the largest AI model for biology ever, trained on 9.3 trillion DNA base pairs from over 128,000 species to advance synthetic biology, medicine, and genome design.

Venture Capital Startups Biotech & Health

Latent Labs Raises $50M to Bring AI-Designed Proteins to Drug Discovery

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Chris McKay• February 12, 2025 • 2 min read

The biotech startup founded by former DeepMind researcher Simon Kohl, has raised $50 million to develop AI models that design synthetic proteins from scratch, aiming to accelerate drug discovery and development.

OpenAI Biotech & Health

OpenAI Partners with Retro Biosciences to Engineer Stem Cell Proteins with AI

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Chris McKay• January 17, 2025 • 2 min read

OpenAI's new model, GPT-4b micro, shows promising results in redesigning proteins that could improve stem cell production efficiency by up to 50 times.

Venture Capital Startups Biotech & Health

Aqemia Raises $38 Million to Propel Quantum-Powered AI Drug Discovery

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Chris McKay• December 10, 2024 • 2 min read

Aqemia's latest funding round shows growing investor confidence in AI-powered drug discovery, as the company prepares for clinical trials and international expansion.

Venture Capital Startups Biotech & Health

New Lantern Launches with $19M in Series A Funding, Unveils AI-Powered Radiology Assistant

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Chris McKay• November 21, 2024 • 2 min read

The startup combines two essential tools radiologists use daily – medical image viewing and reporting software – into a single cloud-based platform enhanced by AI.

Google Biotech & Health

Google DeepMind Makes AlphaFold 3 Open Source for Academia

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Chris McKay• November 11, 2024 • 2 min read

Now, academic researchers can download all necessary code for AlphaFold 3 inference and request access to the model parameters

Biotech & Health Open Source

Chai Discovery Releases Powerful New Open AI Model for Molecular Structure Prediction

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Chris McKay• September 10, 2024 • 2 min read

Chai-1 enables unified prediction of proteins, small molecules, DNA, RNA, and other biomolecular structures. It matches or exceeds the performance of leading models like AlphaFold 3 on several benchmarks.

Google Biotech & Health

Google DeepMind Unveils Powerful New AI for Designing Protein Binders

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Richard Banfield• September 5, 2024 • 2 min read

In tests, AlphaProteo designed successful binders for seven diverse target proteins, including two involved in viral infections and five linked to cancer, inflammation, and autoimmune diseases.

Venture Capital Startups Biotech & Health

Formation Bio Raises $372 Million to Develop Drugs with AI

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Chris McKay• June 26, 2024 • 2 min read

Rather than focusing solely on drug discovery, the company acquires or in-licenses clinical-stage drugs from pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

Google Biotech & Health

Google Deepmind and Isomorphic Labs Announce AlphaFold 3

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Chris McKay• May 8, 2024 • 2 min read

This new version addresses that limitation by modelling how proteins interact with a broader range of molecular partners. This includes DNA, RNA, small molecules (ligands), and even chemical modifications that play a crucial role in cellular function and disease development.

Biotech & Health

Profluent Unveils OpenCRISPR-1, an AI-Designed Gene Editor

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Chris McKay• April 23, 2024 • 2 min read

The implications of OpenCRISPR-1 are vast and could usher in a new era of genetic medicine where treatments are not only more effective but also more accessible.

Venture Capital Startups Biotech & Health

Baseimmune Closes $11.3M Series A to Accelerate AI-Designed Vaccines

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Richard Banfield• February 26, 2024 • 2 min read

Founded in 2019, Baseimmune leverages proprietary deep learning algorithms to predict future mutations of pathogens and design synthetic antigen proteins that can provide broader, longer-lasting immune protection.

Venture Capital Startups Biotech & Health

Bioptimus Raises $35M Seed Funding to Build Biology Foundation Models

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Richard Banfield• February 20, 2024 • 1 min read

Bioptimus’ mission is to accelerate innovation in biomedicine using the latest advancements in AI, specifically large language models.

Microsoft Biotech & Health

AI Speeds Up Hunt for New Infectious Disease Treatments

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Chris McKay• January 16, 2024 • 2 min read

Researchers successfully used generative AI and foundation models to design several small molecule inhibitors for essential target proteins of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and coronaviruses.

Google Biotech & Health

Isomorphic Labs Partners with Eli Lilly and Novartis to Propel AI-Driven Drug Discovery

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Chris McKay• January 7, 2024 • 2 min read

With a combined value of about $3B, the high-profile deals underscore the immense faith that industry leaders have in AI-driven drug discovery as the future of medicine R&D.

Biotech & Health

AI-Discovered Antibiotics Show Promise Against Deadly MRSA

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Chris McKay• December 21, 2023 • 2 min read

Published in Nature, the study reveals that these compounds effectively eliminate MRSA in lab dishes and mouse models, while demonstrating minimal toxicity to human cells.

Venture Capital Startups Biotech & Health

Elucid Secures $80 Million to Drive Adoption of AI-Powered Cardiac Imaging

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Chris McKay• November 10, 2023 • 1 min read

The company says it will leverage the new capital to expand commercialization and clinical research efforts for its suite of cardiac imaging analysis products.

Google Biotech & Health

Google Teases Next Generation of AlphaFold, Expanding AI Structure Prediction Beyond Proteins

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Chris McKay• October 31, 2023 • 3 min read

This next-generation AlphaFold signifies a dramatic leap in performance and showcases the potential of AI to enhance our understanding of molecular biology.

Google Biotech & Health Research

Google DeepMind's New AI Tool Helps Pinpoint the Causes of Genetic Diseases

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Chris McKay• September 22, 2023 • 3 min read

In a recently published paper in Science, it was revealed that AlphaMissense had classified a staggering 89% of all possible missense variants — illuminating the pathogenic or benign nature of these mutations.

Venture Capital Startups Biotech & Health

Medeloop Secures $8M to Pioneer AI-Powered Health Research

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Chris McKay• September 21, 2023 • 2 min read

The platform aims to merge artificial intelligence with healthcare data, offering research professionals an integrated suite of tools that could radically reduce the timeline for medical discovery.

Venture Capital Biotech & Health

Generate:Biomedicines Closes $273 Million Series C to Advance AI-Powered Drug Pipeline

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Chris McKay• September 14, 2023 • 2 min read

Funding will advance pipeline of 17 existing programs and approximately 10 new starts annually.

Biotech & Health Microsoft

Paige and Microsoft are Building the World's Largest AI Model to Detect Cancer

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Chris McKay• September 9, 2023 • 2 min read

The companies believe the model will enable major leaps in accuracy as well as entirely new capabilities for cancer detection and diagnostics.