Variational AI Raises $5.5 Million to Launch Foundation Model for Drug Discovery
Variational AI, the company behind Enki™, an advanced foundation model for small molecule drug discovery, has successfully closed its oversubscribed $5.5 million Seed extension round. Enki™ is designed to help biopharmaceutical chemistry teams efficiently discover and optimize novel hits and leads, speeding up early-stage drug discovery. The funding round, which surpassed the company’s original target, saw strong investor interest, demonstrating confidence in Enki’s potential. Nimbus Synergies led the round, with participation from Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Quimby Investments, Threshold Impact, and Defined Capital. Existing investors Flying Fish, A&E Investment, and Nepenthe Capital also joined in.
The biopharmaceutical industry has seen a rapid acceleration in the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for early-stage drug discovery in recent years. Despite this progress, small molecule drug discovery still largely relies on older, non-generative AI models that focus on finding hits from large libraries of virtual molecules. While these models have proven effective, they often fall short in enabling truly novel discoveries and still require multiple rounds of optimization through Design-Make-Test-Analyze (DMTA) cycles.
“Great drugs start with great molecules, but most drug discovery begins with screening molecular libraries or tweaking existing scaffolds,” said Handol Kim, CEO of Variational AI. Kim emphasized the limitations of traditional methods and the potential of the company’s generative AI-based approach. “By contrast, we’ve trained the Enki™ foundation model on our proprietary dataset covering almost 600 targets, allowing it to generate diverse leads with outstanding potency and selectivity. This empowers biopharmaceutical chemistry teams to discover and optimize hits and leads with the best possible novel starting points far more efficiently than traditional methods,” Kim continued.
Enki™ has already shown significant promise in real-world applications. Kim added, “Our partners synthesize and test about 20 novel molecules from multiple scaffolds that we generate for each project. This process only takes a few weeks and has achieved a sub-micromolar hit rate of over 50%, with a 90% rate of synthetic success.” These results demonstrate how generative AI can accelerate drug discovery while improving the likelihood of successful outcomes.
Generative models, while transformative in fields like language and image processing, have not had the same deep impact on the field of chemistry. This is where Variational AI’s innovative work stands out. “The Variational AI scientific team has spent years quietly building a foundation model specifically tailored to small molecule drug discovery. Our approach uses orders of magnitude less compute and data than foundation models in other domains,” said Jason Robertson, Managing Partner at Nimbus Synergies, which led the company’s recent financing round.
This new foundation model represents a paradigm shift in drug discovery. As Robertson explained, it enables more reliable, cost-effective drug development while improving patient outcomes and ultimately reducing healthcare costs. The foundation model allows researchers to explore a much wider range of novel molecules, providing them with highly potent and selective leads, while cutting down on the time and resources typically required for optimization.
With this new infusion of capital, Variational AI is positioned to expand its technology to a broader market, helping biopharmaceutical companies accelerate their drug discovery processes. By leveraging generative AI to design novel molecules with greater efficiency, Variational AI is opening up new possibilities for faster and more effective drug development, which could lead to quicker advancements in treatments for various diseases.
Enki™ is the cornerstone of Variational AI’s efforts to transform the landscape of drug discovery. The company’s machine learning team, which includes experts from top AI research labs like Google, Microsoft, MIT, Caltech, and D-Wave Quantum, has collaborated with established drug discovery leaders to develop this groundbreaking technology. Based in Vancouver, BC, Canada, Variational AI is continuing to innovate in the field of small molecule drug discovery and is actively expanding its team.
Variational AI’s focus on leveraging generative AI for drug discovery could have a profound impact on the pharmaceutical industry. By dramatically improving the efficiency of the drug discovery process, Enki™ can help biopharmaceutical companies design drugs faster, more efficiently, and at lower costs. This could result in not only quicker access to new treatments for patients but also a more sustainable and cost-effective healthcare ecosystem.
About Variational AI
Variational AI is revolutionizing drug discovery through the use of generative AI. The company’s Enki™ foundation model for small molecule drug discovery is poised to redefine the economics of drug development. With a team composed of experts from leading AI research labs and established drug discovery companies, Variational AI is focused on advancing the efficiency and effectiveness of early-stage drug discovery. The company is based in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and is actively expanding its team to meet growing demand.
About Nimbus Synergies
Nimbus Synergies leads early-stage financings for innovative health technology companies in Canada. By bringing these companies together, Nimbus helps accelerate their growth by sharing resources, industry knowledge, and relationships. With its leadership as an investor, partner, and mentor, Nimbus is significantly impacting the health technology sector.
