Canadian MedTech startup Atomwise has secured 163M CAD in a Series B round of funding held in August 2020, led by B Capital Group and Sanabil Investments. Existing investors DCVC, BV, Tencent, Y Combinator, Dolby Family Ventures, and AME Cloud Ventures also took part along with two undisclosed global insurance companies. B Capital Group’s Raj Ganguly is joining Atomwise’s Board of Directors and Hani Enaya of Sanabil is joining as a Board Observer.
The latest round brings the startup’s total funding to almost 231M CAD.
The AI-driven drug discovery platform was founded in 2012 by Abraham Heifets, Alexander Levy and Dr. Izhar Wallach and was earlier known as Chematria. It was initially a part of University of Toronto’s incubator before associating with Y Combinator and relocating to San Francisco. It performs hundreds of projects per year in collaboration with some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical and agrochemical companies, as well as more than 200 universities and hospitals in over 40 countries. AtomNet, its deep convolutional network AI platform created for drug discovery contains more than 16 billion molecules for virtual screening.
In January 2019, Charles River Laboratories and Atomwise formed an association to provide integrated, AI-Driven drug discovery. Proceeds from the funding round will be used to further enhance what the startup claims to be “the largest” AI-driven drug discovery portfolio “in history” and augment a deal pipeline worth more than $5B for small molecule drug discovery.
Atomwise also plans to use the funds to grow its range of drug discovery joint ventures with leading researchers and corporate partners such as Eli Lilly and Company, Bayer, Hansoh Pharmaceuticals, and Bridge Biotherapeutics, as well as budding biotechnology companies like StemoniX and SEngine Precision Medicine. In addition, the newly acquired capital will also be utilized by the MedTech startup in increasing its headcount and enhancing its platform. The startup’s aim is to join forces with researchers to commercialize “high potential contenders” through the drug development process.
Abraham Heifets, CEO said, “We will be able to leverage the support given by our new and existing investment partners to develop our own pipeline of small molecule drug programs.”
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