Molecule.one has raised $4.6million in seed funding in a round led by Atmos Ventures with participation from AME Cloud Ventures, Cherubic Ventures, Firlej Kastory, Inventures and Luminous Ventures.
Pre-seed investor Sunfish Partners also took part, along with a few notable individual investors, including Dr. Sebastian Guth, President of Bayer Pharmaceuticals for the Americas region.
Pre-seed investor Sunfish Partners also took part, along with a few notable individual investors, including Dr. Sebastian Guth, President of Bayer Pharmaceuticals for the Americas region.
Molecule.one has pioneered the commercial use of artificial intelligence (AI) for synthesis planning – the task of predicting how to physically make a given molecule. The platform is based on AI models developed by the company that achieve state-of-the-art results on publicly available and industry-recognized benchmarks.
"Our mission is to speed up the discovery of new drugs by dramatically improving the predictability of chemistry," said Dr. Piotr Byrski, CEO and Co-Founder of Molecule.one. "With this round, we are set to bring our offering to a broader audience and confirm our position as makers of the most accurate and robust AI for chemical synthesis planning."
The company is particularly focused on applying the technology in partnership with pharmaceutical & biotech companies that work to discover new small molecule drugs. The market for small molecule drug discovery is projected to reach $50 billion by 2025. Since early 2020, the company has worked with several large pharmaceutical companies and AI-driven drug discovery organizations to help them understand if and how their candidate molecules could be made in a laboratory.
"We loved the fact that Molecule.one has been able to win the trust of early partners in the pharmaceutical industry with their unique combination of strong AI and a modern, convenient user interface. We believe they are poised to not only speed up the drug discovery process but also to power new discovery pipelines focused on molecules that are otherwise inaccessible. They are well-positioned to establish a market standard in this fascinating field and are blazing a trail for the CEE region to become an important hub in the biotech space. " said Dominik Andrzejczuk, Partner at Atmos Ventures.
“A key challenge of leveraging AI tools in life sciences is the scarcity of useful data. The technology developed by this highly technical and multidisciplinary team shows their deep understanding of chemistry and surgical application of machine learning. We believe they are well-positioned to transform chemical synthesis, and we are very excited to support them in this endeavor,” added Jeffrey Chung, Managing Director at AME Cloud Ventures.
“It was an easy decision for us to double down on Molecule.one in this round. We’ve had the privilege to build a strong relationship with the team over the past two years. We are very confident in their ability to help transform the way drugs are discovered. More than a year into the pandemic, the need for this has become more pressing than ever,” concluded Dr. Marcus Erken, Founding Partner at Sunfish Partners.
The funds will be used to expand the team to further advance Molecule.one’s proprietary AI platform, and to grow the company’s capacity to serve more partners in the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors. The company plans to open new offices in the US and Western Europe and is actively looking for mission-driven professionals in machine learning, software development, organic chemistry, sales and partnership development.
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For More Information, Please Contact:
- Name: Weronika Kozyra-Brzezik
- Tel: +48664873287
- Email: press@molecule.one
- Visit the newsroom of: Weronika Kozyra-Brzezik
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