AI pharmaceutical company XtalPi secured USD 400 million in a Series D financing round led by OrbiMed and RRJ, with investors including Sequoia Capital, Sino Biopharmecutical, and 5Y Capital participating in the deal. The new funds come less than a year after the company raised USD 300 million in a Series C round and brings XtalPi’s valuation to over RMB 13 billion (USD 2 billion).
XtalPi is an AI drug R&D company that uses computational physics, quantum chemistry, and cloud computing to provide intelligent drug development for pharmaceutical companies. The company’s ID4 (Intelligent Digital Drug Discovery and Development) platform can accurately predict the important characteristics for new drugs by measuring various chemical indicators, enhancing drug R&D efficiency. ID4 has enabled hundreds of pharmaceutical companies to accelerate their research pipelines, leading to dozens of new discoveries.
XtalPi has partnered with a number of major pharmaceutical companies in China. Its AI technology encompasses machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing to improve drug development outcomes and drive clinical research. Advances in computing power have enabled AI algorithms to discover new drugs more effectively than human researchers and reduce risk.
“Due to increases in computing power, traditional drug discovery methods have been subverted. In the future, AI pharmaceutical companies have the opportunity to become giants like water or power companies, and create immense social value,” said one investor of XtalPi, adding that the company is well placed to explore a number of verticals within drug development. The company has the support of some of the biggest players in tech; its investors include Google, Tencent, and SoftBank.
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KrASIA Connection features translated and adapted content published by 36Kr. This article was originally written by Dun Yuting for 36Kr.