The Overview of AI in Drug Discovery in 2019: The “Proof-of-concept Year”

1. Notable Venture Rounds, New AI Startups

According to BPT Analytics report, the overall number of new AI-startups per year has been declining since 2017, with only 9 newcomers in 2018, and only one notable new AI startup focusing on drug discovery in 2019, so far -- Acorn AI, a “big data”-driven AI-company founded by Medidata to accelerate drug discovery via optimizing clinical trials. 

The total amount of disclosed venture capital raised for AI-driven drug discovery startups in 2019 is around $0.5B so far, the number likely increasing by the end of the year.

Below is a summary of some of the most important venture rounds in the “AI for drug discovery space” in 2019: 

BlackThorn Therapeutics

San Francisco based BlackThorn Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech company focusing on developing first-in-class drugs for neurobehavioral disorders, closed a $76 million Series B financing from multiple investors. The money will be used to further advance its drug discovery research efforts, including the application of AI-driven cloud-based platform PathFinder™ to generate objective neuromarkers, which support drug target identification, and improving the success of its drug candidates in clinical trials.

Exscientia

This British drug discovery company focusing on an “end-to-end” drug candidate development using its AI-driven platform Centaur Chemist™ raised $26 million in round B in January, to scale up collaborations with big pharma, as well as build own portfolio of small molecules.

Insilico Medicine

The Hong Kong-based company Insilico Medicine, a developer of a comprehensive drug discovery and biomarker development platform GENTRL, and a pioneer in the application of generative adversarial networks (GANs) to drug discovery use cases, raised a $37 million round B to commercialize its AI-driven “end-to-end” drug design platform GENTRL, and expand its business development team.