Atomwise Inc. has raised $45 million of growth funding in support of its mission to become the preferred artificial intelligence partner for the world’s leading pharmaceutical, biotech, and agrochemical companies.
“Atomwise was the first startup to commercialize deep neural networks for drug discovery in 2012,” said Dr. Abraham Heifets, Co-founder and CEO of Atomwise. “It seemed to many like science fiction then, but now in 2018, Atomwise has the commercial traction with a host of customers to demonstrate our leadership in AI for drug discovery.”
Atomwise has struck partnerships with four of the top-ten U.S. pharma companies, multiple biotech firms, and over forty major research universities.
“With our partners, Atomwise has brought the power of artificial intelligence to breakthrough research on deadly viruses, several forms of cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, metabolic diseases, life-threatening bacteria, endemic parasites, and crop-blighting fungi in agriculture” said Dr. Izhar Wallach, Co-Founder and CTO of Atomwise. “With this funding, Atomwise is ready to help hundreds of organisations discover compounds that could become tomorrow’s blockbusters.”
The company said, like software used to design airplanes and computer chips in simulation, Atomwise can help make predictions about new potential medicines before they are made, reducing the need for costly and time-consuming physical synthesis and testing. Its groundbreaking AtomNet drug research technology learns like a human chemist, using powerful deep learning algorithms and elastic supercompute platforms to analyze millions of potential medicines each day.
AtomNet provides greater understanding of the toxicity, side effects, mechanism of action, and efficacy of a drug, far earlier than typical in a drug pipeline. This ability provides Atomwise customers an exponential reduction in the cost and risk of drug discovery. In that context, Atomwise’s choice of strategic investors with deep industry ties is critical for achieving its vision of transforming the way medicines are discovered.
“The one-trillion dollar global pharmaceutical industry is rapidly shifting toward AI-driven R&D productivity and Atomwise is clearly leading this charge.” said Gavin Teo, Partner at B Capital Group. “B Capital, built in partnership with the Boston Consulting Group, is excited to support Atomwise to expand and deepen relationships with biopharma corporates seeking transformative technology to grow their R&D pipeline.”
