Isomorphic Labs 以AI为先的药物押注：融资6亿美元，制药交易29亿美元，尚无药物上市

做的是什么生意

Isomorphic Labs is a London-based company spun out of Google DeepMind in 2021 that uses AI models built on AlphaFold to design small-molecule drugs and license discovery programs to pharma partners.

启动资金：$600M first external round led by Thrive Capital with GV and Alphabet (announced 2025-03-31); earlier, Lilly paid $45M upfront (up to $1.7B milestones) and Novartis $37.5M upfront (up to $1.2B milestones).

起因

Demis Hassabis launched Isomorphic Labs in 2021 under Alphabet, spinning it out of DeepMind to apply AlphaFold — the AI that predicts protein structures — to drug design. The thesis: biology is information, and a model that can read it will find drug targets and molecules faster than wet-lab screening. Isomorphic co-designed AlphaFold 3 with DeepMind, and in January 2024 it signed its first pharma deals: Eli Lilly ($45M upfront, up to $1.7B in milestones) and Novartis ($37.5M upfront, up to $1.2B), together worth nearly $3B excluding royalties.

经过

The partnerships were validation without a product: no Isomorphic-discovered drug had reached trials, and the company's 2021 accounts showed a £2.4M loss as it hired ahead of opening a Lausanne office. In March 2025 Isomorphic raised $600M — its first external round — led by Thrive Capital with GV and Alphabet participating; Hassabis told the New York Times the company didn't need the capital but would use it to hire top research scientists. The stated goal was to bring AI-designed drugs to clinical trials.

结果

Still scaling, unproven: as of 2025-03-31 Isomorphic had $600M in new capital, pharma partnerships worth up to ~$3B, and a goal of getting its first AI-discovered drugs into clinical trials — the bet had won funding and partners, but no clinical proof yet.

可借鉴之处

验证可以先于产品：Isomorphic将制药公司足够信任的AI引擎变现，预付数十亿美元里程碑款——但授权策略尚未证明其能产出分子。