China AI drug discovery platform StoneWise raises $100m

The first tranche was led by Legend Capital and the extension by Greater Bay Area Homeland Development Fund and Lightspeed China Partners. Existing backers GL Ventures, SIG, Long Hill Capital, and Linear Capital re-upped, while Eastern Bell Capital and CDH Investments - via its venture and growth strategy - came in as new investors.

The proceeds will go towards global recruitment efforts and the further development and commercialization of StoneWise's AI-driven drug development platform.

Founded in 2018, the company claims to have "software-ized" the design module for small molecule drugs - and become the first Chinese company to commercialize such software. The average R&D cycle for a new drug is as long as 15 years, with costs reaching $2.6 billion. An AI-driven platform reduces time and cost by narrowing the field of candidates to those most likely to succeed.

StoneWise’s platform is used by several top scientific research institutions and pharmaceutical companies. In the past year, its software has enabled multiple projects, involving complex or first-in-class drugs, to achieve breakthrough test results in relatively short time periods. This contributed to "hundreds of millions of dollars in commercial returns," according to the statement.

In the AI-driven drug development space, China and US-based XtalPi has raised $319 million in Series C funding last year, while Insilico Medicine completed a $37 million Series B in 2019.

Insilico was the first drug developer to use GAN – a generative adversarial network, whereby neural networks try to spoof one another with fake signals, creating a strong authentication system – to identify molecules. Once combined with machine learning, the system was able to generate novel molecules in 46 days that could be used to disrupt the spread of certain cancers. This kind of process normally takes up to a year.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Deals
• Healthcare
• Technology
• China
• artificial intelligence
• Pharmaceuticals
• GL Ventures
• CDH Investments Management
• Long Hill Capital
• SIG
• Linear Capital
• Lightspeed Venture Partners