Alex Zhavoronkov, Founder and Co-CEO of Insilico Medicine.
Insilico Medicine
Insilico Medicine, an AI drug discovery company based in Hong Kong and Boston, joined the unicorn club in a $110 million financing raised by Value Partners Group, a Hong Kong headquarters facility manager.
Insilico said on Wednesday that the E Series is valued at more than $1 billion. The company did not name investors participating in the round. Its former supporters include U.S. private equity giant Warburg Pincus, Chinese biotech-focused company Qiming Venture Partners, Wuxi of Chinese billionaire Li Ge, and Hongshan and Hillhouse.
The company said it will use earnings to refine its AI model and improve the development of its portfolio of 30 AI drug discovery candidates. The company said in November that its main drug candidate is a potential drug for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in an incurable lung disease, showing positive results in an interim human trial in the United States. Insilico added that this potential drug, known as Rentosertib, has shown potential in treating diseases related to aging.
“If we can get Rentosertib approval over the next five years, we will make history,” Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and co-CEO of Insilico Medicine, said in a video interview on Thursday.
Founded in 2014, Insilico is a company that deploys AI and robotics, hoping to speed up the time-consuming and time-consuming drug development process and improve its success rate. Insilico says its technology can shorten the early drug discovery process to 12 to 18 months, compared with 30 to 48 months using conventional methods. It recently deployed a humanoid robot in a laboratory in the mainland city of Suzhou to help complete tasks such as laboratory supervision.
Insilico's Rentosertib goes further in most AI-discovered drugs in the space often marked by failure. The company also licensed mergers of some of its drug candidates for Fosun Pharma in China, Menarini Group in Italy and Exelixis in America, while earning more than $2.1 billion in mergers while providing AI software to help customers discover novel drugs.
Insilico filed for an IPO in Hong Kong in 2023 and 2024, but both applications have been successful in lukewarm markets. Zhavoronkov said he is still considering making the company public in Hong Kong but refused to provide a timeline.
“We didn’t go to the IPO last year because we are waiting for the readings for the second phase [of Rentosertib],” he said. “If it was up to me, I would have done this faster because now it is a very favorable market environment. However, we need to get some regulatory support because there are many rules. ”
Insilico's peer XTALPI was released in Hong Kong in June 2024. The company's stock has risen more than 20% since then, as the company has fueled AI Fever by Home Klowing Deepseek in China. As of Thursday, Xtalpi had a market capitalization of about $3.3 billion.
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