AI-Powered Hong Kong Biotech Startup Raises $60 Million From Top VCs Including B Capital, Qiming

Hong Kong-based biotech startup Insilico Medicine has raised $60 million in Series D funding from investors including Singapore billionaire Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital Group, private equity giant Warburg Pincus and Midas Lister Nisa Leung’s Qiming Venture Partners.

Other investors in the round include Pavilion Capital, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore’s state investor Temasek, and BHR Partners, a Chinese private equity firm that has backed the likes of ride-hailing giant Didi and electric vehicle battery maker CATL.

To date, Insilico Medicine has raised more than $360 million, including a Series C funding round of $255 million in June last year. The Series C round included investors Sequoia Capital China, Baidu Ventures, Korean billionaire Park Hyeon-joo’s Mirae Asset Capital and former Google China chief Kai-Fu Lee’s Sinovation Ventures.

The Series D funding round is “a testament to the strength of our end-to-end AI platform, which has been validated by many partners, and produced our first novel antifibrotic program discovered using AI and aging research, and designed using our generative AI chemistry engine,” Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, said in a statement on Monday.

Part of the money raised will be used for the continued development of Pharma.AI, Insilico Medicine’s software platform that helps with drug analysis and experimentation. The funds will also be used to develop a fully automated, AI-driven robotic drug discovery laboratory and fully robotic biological data factory, Insilico Medicine said in the statement.

“The application of artificial intelligence and machine learning for drug discovery has incredible potential to transform the way new therapies are developed,” said Min Fang, managing director and head of China healthcare at Warburg Pincus, in the statement.

Headquartered in Hong Kong and with an office in New York, Insilico Medicine uses AI to speed up drug research for diseases like cancer. Before starting Insilico Medicine in 2014, Zhavoronkov founded Deep Longevity, another AI-powered healthcare startup in Hong Kong.