insitro, a San Francisco, CA-based machine-learning driven drug discovery and development company, raised $143m in Series B financing.
The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from new investors Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. as well as funds managed by BlackRock, Casdin Capital, HOF Capital, WuXi AppTec’s Corporate Venture Fund, and other undisclosed investors. Current investors ARCH Venture Partners, Foresite Capital, GV, Third Rock Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, and Alexandria Venture Investments also participated in the financing. In conjunction with the funding, Vijay Pande, Ph.D., general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, joined insitro’s board of directors.
The company intends to use the funds to:
- continue to build foundations of technology and automation, enabling data generation at larger scale and further expanding the capabilities to generate predictive models of human disease,
- prosecute newly identified, genetically validated targets,
- identify patient segmentation biomarkers,
- advance therapeutics in genetically-defined patient populations,
- establish new, synergistic industry partnerships, and
- build additional ML-enabled capabilities along the R&D value chain in order to accelerate drug discovery and development.
Led by Daphne Koller, Ph.D., founder and chief executive officer, insitro is a data-driven drug discovery and development company using machine learning and high-throughput biology to transform the way that drugs are discovered and delivered to patients. The company is applying technologies from bioengineering to create massive data sets that enable modern machine learning methods to be brought to bear on key bottlenecks in pharmaceutical R&D. The resulting predictive models are used to accelerate target selection, to design and develop effective therapeutics, and to inform clinical strategy.
FinSMEs
27/05/2020