Atomwise, a San Francisco, CA-based company that develops artificial intelligence systems for drug discovery has raised $45 million in Series A funding led by Monsanto Growth Ventures, B Capital Group and Data Collective. Prior investors Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, and DFJ also participated in this Series A financing, along with new investors Baidu Ventures, Tencent, and Dolby Family Ventures. The oversubscribed round brings Atomwise’s total capital raised to more than $51 million.
Founded in 2012, Atomwise’s mission is to become the preferred artificial intelligence partner for the world’s leading pharmaceutical, biotech, and agrochemical companies. They are the creator of AtomNet, the first Deep Learning technology for novel small molecule discovery used by research groups to gain powerful advantages in the scope, scale, and success rates of their drug discovery programs.
Atomwise’s Series A marks the culmination of two years of unprecedented business growth. Atomwise has struck partnerships with four of the top-ten U.S. pharma companies, multiple biotech firms, and over forty major research universities. All told, Atomwise has over fifty distinct molecular discovery programs. The Atomwise approach demonstrates a new model for a pharmaceutical industry that is facing a crisis of declining productivity, spending more on research each year, yet achieving fewer breakthroughs per dollar.
“With our initial work in 2012, Atomwise became the first startup to commercialize deep neural networks for drug discovery,” 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.”
