Isomorphic Labs in talks to raise over $2B for AI drug discovery
What's the deal? Isomorphic Labs, the AI-powered drug discovery company spun out of Alphabet's Google DeepMind, is in advanced discussions to raise more than $2 billion in a new funding round. Thrive Capital is set to lead the financing, with Alphabet also participating, according to Bloomberg.
The London-based company plans to use the capital for its drug design engine and global expansion. The round is not yet closed.
Why now? Isomorphic Labs, formed in 2021 to commercialise AlphaFold — DeepMind's AI program for predicting protein structures — has been building momentum through partnerships with pharma giants Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, and Novartis. The new round would follow its first funding led by Thrive last year.
The raise also fits Alphabet's broader strategy of turning futuristic bets into standalone businesses. Waymo, its autonomous driving unit, raised $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation earlier this year. Alphabet has also made major investments in SpaceX and Anthropic.
Meanwhile, competition in AI-driven drug discovery is heating up. OpenAI, also backed by Thrive, recently introduced a model aimed at accelerating the same field.
What could go wrong? Silicon Valley has a long track record of stumbling in health and life sciences. Drug discovery remains notoriously slow, expensive, and failure-prone — even with AI tools that promise to speed it up. The gap between predicting protein structures and delivering approved drugs is vast.
There's also the question of governance. DeepMind chief executive officer Demis Hassabis runs both DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs, and the company has recruited heavily from its sister organisation. That overlap could create tensions as Isomorphic scales independently.
The signal: This potential raise underscores the massive capital flowing into AI-for-science startups, particularly in biotech and drug discovery. Investors are betting that the same transformer-based architectures reshaping software can fundamentally alter how medicines are designed.
It also highlights a pattern: the biggest AI labs — whether OpenAI, DeepMind, or their spinouts — are attracting the lion's share of venture capital, making it harder for smaller players to compete. If Isomorphic closes this round at over $2 billion, it would cement the company as one of Europe's most well-funded AI ventures and signal that pharma-AI partnerships are moving from experimental to existential.
Source: Bloomberg
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