AI Pharma tech startup, Exscientia secured around $525 Million in funding

Exscientia, an England-based clinical-stage pharma tech company using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to design patient-based drugs, has now secured $225 million in a Series D funding round.

Exscientia is founded by Andrew Hopkins. Exscientia has developed a broad array of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and experimental technologies to capture and utilize the most patient-relevant data to precision design drugs for multiparameter optimization.

AI in pharma has many applications such as early stage drug discovery, diagnostics, prescribing treatment options, AI-based medical imaging, personal AI assistants, and genomics etc. According to the Business Research Company report, global AI in pharma market projected to grow from $0.91 billion in 2020 to $1.27 billion in 2021. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) for clinical trials research is driving its demand for AI in the pharma market.

Eric Chen, a Managing Partner of SoftBank Investment Advisers, said, "We believe Exscientia’s innovative use of AI to discover and design better quality drugs with greater efficiency has the potential to create important medicines faster than ever before. With the convergence of technology and biology, drug discovery is rapidly evolving in ways that will reshape the industry. The Exscientia team have been leaders in AI-based drug discovery since the field's inception and we believe they will continue shaping its future."

Andrew Hopkins, CEO of Exscienti, said, "All of our investors share Exscientia’s vision to discover better drugs, faster, through AI and automation. Our patient-first AI platform has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to precision design drugs that address patients’ needs. With the Series D completed, the quality and depth of our shareholder base allows us the freedom to continue to scale both our platform and pipeline."

The SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led the latest Exscientia's funding round and was joined by Blackrock and Novo Holdings.

Other participating investors include Pivotal bioVenture Partners, GT Healthcare Capital, Farallon Capital, Laurion Capital, Mubadala Investment Company, Hongkou, Casdin Capital, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Marshall Wace.

Apart from that, SoftBank is also offering an additional $300 million equity commitment that can be drawn at the Exscientia's discretion.

The company, as of now, has plans to use the new funds to advance its proprietary pipeline via clinical testing as well as to continue expanding the technology platform towards the autonomous drug design.