China Life backs AI drug development platform XtalPi
A healthcare fund managed by China Life Insurance has led a $46 million extended Series B investment in XtalPi, a US-based artificial intelligence-enabled healthcare services platform established by Chinese scientists.
SIG and Yael Capital – a Chinese biotech-focused VC firm set up earlier this year – also took part in the round. It follows an original Series B of $15 million that closed in January with contributions from Sequoia Capital China, Google, and Tencent Holdings. ZhenFund and FreesFund were earlier investors in the company. It has now raised over $66 million in total.
XtalPi was founded on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus in 2014 by a group of quantum physicists. It uses cloud-based technology to provide accurate predictions regarding the physiochemical and pharmaceutical properties of small-molecule drugs, which contributes insights into the safety, stability, and efficacy of drug candidates. This can boost the cost-effectiveness of drug development by enabling researchers to accelerate and de-risk pharmaceutical innovations.
The new capital will support an upgrade of the company's flagship product, the intelligent digital drug discovery and development platform (ID4). XtalPi is also working on a range of AI applications, specifically algorithmic tools that expand the searchable chemical space in drug discovery and predict key drug properties.
"We want to open our base solution platform to support other developers of drug research and development algorithms. Through this, we will help global pharmaceutical companies connect with a wide range of the latest AI research tools in an easily accessible way, and thereby further improve the efficiency of drug discovery and development," said Shuhao Wen, co-founder and chairman of XtalPi, in a statement.
Sequoia and ZhenFund are both also investors in Deep Intelligent Pharma (DIP), which runs an AI-powered project management platform intended to bring greater efficiency to the drug development process. The company received a $15 million pre-Series B round earlier this month.
Other investment activity has focused on AI-based medical imaging to speed up diagnosis. VC-backed Huiyi Huiying, Beijing Infervision, and 12 Sigma are specialists in this area.
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