Entos Nets $53 Million to Accelerate AI-Driven Therapies
Entos, the California-headquartered creator of a platform that utilizes artificial intelligence to design therapies, has secured $53 million in a funding round led by technology investor Coatue to support its breakthrough AI and quantum mechanics-driven drug design efforts.
Entos' AI-powered OrbNet platform is designed to cut through the waiting time and complexities associated with traditional therapeutic discovery methods, which often require prolonged timelines and massive training data needs, albeit with sub-optimal accuracy. OrbNet creates a thousand-fold acceleration in molecular properties prediction with 100 times less training data necessary.
Through this powerful platform, Entos has already forged various partnerships with investors and leaders in the pharmaceuticals, materials, and chemicals industries to create meaningful therapies with significantly high accuracies.
"Drug development is a highly complex endeavor that is plagued by both cost and time inefficiency, and we believe that incorporating Entos’ impressive technology into the process will result in faster timelines and vastly improved therapeutics,” Aaron Weiner, managing director and head of healthcare at Coatue, said in a statement.
In addition to Coatue, the Series A financing also had the support of biomedical technology investment firm Catalio Capital Management, OrbiMed, Sequoia Capital, alongside existing investors Freeflow and Nexus Ventures. The round was oversubscribed and represents a unique combination of investor types, including those involved in life sciences and advanced tech.
As part of the transaction, Weiner will be joining the Entos Board of Directors, same with Catalio co-founder and managing partner R. Jacob Vogelstein, Ph.D. The current board comprises Entos co-founder and CEO Tom Miller, Entos co-founder and chief technology officer Fred Manby, and Nexus Venture Partners co-founder and managing director Naren Gupta.
"Tom and Fred lead a team steeped in quantum mechanics and chemistry that is working to rethink the process of drug development. We are proud to partner with them and the rest of growing Entos team as they continue to achieve increased customer traction and seek their goal of revolutionizing the drug discovery process," added Weiner.
The funds raised will be used to accelerate Entos' OrbNet AI platform, including integrating this technology with robotic synthesis and high-throughput experimentation. It will also be utilized to finance massive hiring plans to strengthen further the company's lineup of engineering and science talent.
"There is a critical need for innovative drug design platforms that can rapidly deliver superior compounds to treat disease, and we can think of no group better suited than the Entos team to lead the industry into the future. We believe that Entos’ unique combination of algorithms, software, and wetware can generate the highest quality drug candidates at unprecedented speed and scale," said Dr. Vogelstein.
Entos is a household name in the machine-learning driven biopharmaceutical space. It has a strong stable of renowned scientists and engineers who are experts in computational and medicinal chemistry, AI, and software development. The company is also backed by a high-profile Scientific Advisory Board that includes Chemistry Nobel Prize winner Frances Arnold.