SyntheticGestalt

About SyntheticGestalt

SyntheticGestalt is an AI startup founded in 2018 with dual headquarters in London, UK, and Tokyo, Japan. The company operates at the intersection of life sciences and artificial intelligence, focusing on accelerating drug discovery and enzyme discovery through its proprietary machine learning models.

The company was co-founded by Koki Shimada, who serves as the CEO. Shimada graduated from Kyoto University, co-founded a cybersecurity firm where he was the CTO, and later led a research project at University College London on protein function prediction using machine learning. This background in both entrepreneurship and computational biology underpins the company's mission to automate scientific invention.

SyntheticGestalt's core business revolves around its AI-powered platform that significantly shortens the research period for drug discovery. The platform utilizes large-scale foundation AI models, trained on billions of data points, to design, discover, and analyze small and large molecules. One of its key products is the "SG4D10B" model, a large molecule-specialized foundation AI developed by learning the structural patterns of 10 billion compounds. This technology can identify new drug candidates from vast compound libraries in a matter of days. The service provides features like predicting ADMET (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity) properties, screening for toxicity, and offering rich chemical insights.

The company's business model includes joint research collaborations with pharmaceutical companies, public institutions, and life science companies. It offers services in two main ways: joint development of custom AI solutions using a partner's proprietary data and joint searches for novel substances using SyntheticGestalt's existing AI. This allows clients to enhance their R&D capabilities and accelerate their discovery pipelines. For instance, the company has collaborated with Enamine to leverage its REAL database of 38 billion molecules to create advanced AI models for generating synthesizable drug candidates.

SyntheticGestalt has secured significant funding to advance its research and expand its operations. In September 2021, the company announced the completion of a Series A round, raising $11 million, bringing its total funding to $14 million. Key investors include Incubate Fund, Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, and the UK Government's Future Fund.