The organisation plans to use the investment as a means of accelerating the application of its AI model, at scale.

AI-powered drug design and development company Isomorphic Labs has announced the raising of $2.1bn in Series B funding. The round was led by Thrive Capital and includes participation from existing backers Alphabet and GV alongside new investors MGX, Temasek, CapitalG and the UK Sovereign AI Fund.

Founded in 2021 and led by CEO Demis Hassabis and its president Max Jaderberg, Isomorphic Labs is headquartered in London and has additional premises in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Lausanne, Switzerland. The company, which is a spin-off from Google DeepMind, an AI research lab acquired by Alphabet in 2014, aims to address the challenges of drug discovery using AI technology. 

Isomorphic labs intends to put the recently raised funds towards the continued development and deployment of its AI drug design engine (IsoDDE) and the acceleration and expansion of its pipeline of therapeutic programmes. Additionally, the funding will support current hiring targets.

Commenting on the announcement Ruth Porat, the president and chief investment officer at Alphabet and Google said, “The application of AI in healthcare offers a profound opportunity. 

“Isomorphic Labs has already made extraordinary progress in harnessing AI to accelerate drug discovery, and we are excited by this momentum and the early promise of the technology platform.This trajectory is encouraging, and this funding will be used to accelerate the work and bring important interventions to market with greater speed.”

Jaderberg added, “This milestone is built on the strength of our AI drug design engine, which has already proven its worth across our internal programmes by hitting key milestones and identifying viable candidates with unprecedented speed.

“Our drug design engine works, and it’s giving us a repeatable way to design new medicines for a wide range of diseases, building a future of medicine that was previously out of reach.”

Reportedly, Isomorphic expects to run its first clinical trials by the end of 2026, a delay from the CEO’s earlier target of having AI-designed drugs in trials by the end of 2025.

In late April, Alphabet was among some of the large scale organisations posting positive quarterly reports. Alphabet beat revenue expectations for the past quarter, led by its growing cloud business, which rose 63pc to hit $20bn. Consolidated revenue grew 22pc to nearly $110bn.

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