BURLINGAME, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Genesis Therapeutics, a company pioneering artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to create breakthrough medicines for patients with severe diseases, announced today that it has closed an oversubscribed $200 million round of Series B financing. The fresh capital will enable Genesis to evolve into a clinical stage company, further invest in its state-of-the-art AI platform, and ambitiously expand its discovery pipeline.
The financing was co-led by a U.S.-based life-sciences-focused investor, along with returning investor Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Bio + Health which led the company’s seed financing. In addition, several other new investors participated in the Series B including Fidelity Management & Research Company, BlackRock, and NVIDIA’s venture capital arm NVentures, along with existing investors T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Rock Springs Capital, Radical Ventures, and Menlo Ventures.
The funds will be used to advance Genesis’ existing wholly owned pipeline of AI-enabled programs into clinical development. Genesis will also invest in continued development of novel and state-of-the-art generative and predictive AI methods, which form the foundation of the Genesis Exploration of Molecular Space (GEMS) platform. Additionally, the Series B capital will enable Genesis to ambitiously expand its pipeline, initiating new programs for underserved patient populations and leveraging the GEMS platform to make progress against challenging and previously undruggable targets.
“AI presents a potent opportunity to revolutionize the drug discovery process, which frequently struggles to produce viable drug candidates against targets that are biologically well-validated but considered undruggable due to highly challenging chemistry,” said CEO Evan Feinberg, Ph.D. “This funding comes as Genesis is approaching an inflection point with the first of our AI-enabled drug candidates entering the clinic. The addition of our new lead investor, and other meaningful additions to our biotech and AI-oriented syndicate, will support Genesis in developing breakthrough therapies for patients with severe unmet medical needs, and their families, capitalizing on the broad applicability and potential of the GEMS AI platform.”
Vijay Pande, Ph.D., founding general partner at a16z Bio + Health, was the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Structural Biology and of Computer Science at Stanford University and co-invented some of the foundational Genesis deep learning technologies. Dr. Pande commented: “Genesis has uniquely integrated deep learning and simulations since inception, and the ability of their GEMS AI platform to address previously undruggable targets is a testament to Genesis’ leadership in molecular generative AI. Blending technology and biomedicine has untapped potential, and it's an exciting time to be at the nexus of these two powerful forces. Each new advance Genesis makes with their field-leading AI platform not only pushes technological boundaries but also brings hope to countless individuals awaiting medical breakthroughs."
Genesis’ internal pipeline programs have been enabled by the GEMS AI platform, which leverages proprietary, field-leading, generative and predictive AI methods to produce novel molecules and make rapid, accurate predictions of properties such as potency, selectivity, and ADMET. GEMS is uniquely capable of identifying and enabling drug candidates for challenging, data-poor, and previously undruggable targets, thereby allowing Genesis to make progress towards breakthrough treatments with the potential for transformative impact across significant and underserved patient populations.
This funding brings the total capital raised by Genesis Therapeutics to over $280 million. In addition to the $200 million Series B raise, Genesis further announced that approximately $24 million of SAFE notes from a prior financing round, led by Radical Ventures, converted alongside the close of the Series B. Genesis previously raised a $52 million Series A, led by Rock Springs Capital, and a seed round of $4 million, led by a16z Bio + Health. In addition to these venture financings, Genesis has also previously announced collaborations with Genentech and Eli Lilly.
About Genesis Therapeutics
Genesis Therapeutics – headquartered in Burlingame, CA, with a fully integrated laboratory in San Diego – is unifying AI and biotechnology to discover novel and breakthrough treatments for patients with severe and devastating conditions. We are using a proprietary state-of-the-art generative and predictive AI platform called GEMS (Genesis Exploration of Molecular Space), to accelerate and optimize small molecule drug discovery.
The GEMS platform integrates deep learning-based predictive models, molecular simulations, and chemically aware language models. GEMS accelerates candidate selection by generating promising molecules for synthesis and experimental testing, and iterating this process through multiple cycles of AI-enabled discovery and optimization. Using GEMS’s unique advantages, the company has built an internal pipeline with multiple programs against targets that are data-poor and canonically undruggable.
To learn more about Genesis Therapeutics, or current employment opportunities, please visit our website.
