Isomorphic Labs, an AI-driven platform for drug discovery that originated from Google’s DeepMind in 2021, has secured its first external funding. The company has raised $600 million in a round led by Thrive Capital, with additional investment from GV and its existing backer, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, as announced.    

This new funding will be utilized to further enhance Isomorphic’s AI-powered drug design capabilities and facilitate the progression of its discovered drugs into clinical trials.

Isomorphic Labs was established by Demis Hassabis, a co-founder of DeepMind, leveraging the AI drug discovery software developed by DeepMind, including AlphaFold. AlphaFold is an AI model renowned for its ability to predict the three-dimensional structures of proteins.

In the previous year, Isomorphic Labs formed strategic partnerships with pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly and Novartis, which could potentially yield up to $3 billion in milestone payments in exchange for access to its AI technology, as reported.

According to Demis Hassabis, as stated in an interview with The New York Times, although Isomorphic Labs did not necessarily require the additional capital, the funding will enable the company to recruit top-tier research scientists.

Hassabis, along with DeepMind researcher John Jumper, was among the recipients of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their groundbreaking work on AlphaFold.