Insilico secures $37 million from top-tier experts— now what?
For the many experts in AI, pharma, and longevity industries who know our team well the recent announcement of our $37 million round may come as no surprise. We are the original inventors of some of the critical technologies that make it possible to identify and prioritize disease targets in very unique way, evaluate human relevance of disease models, validate these targets with novel chemistry, and predict the outcomes of the clinical trials outcomes. We were also the original inventor of the deep aging clocks that gradually learn human biology and can be retrained on diseases. And we started validating some of the super cool targets in oncology, fibrosis, and NASH. All this sounds too good to be true. To be honest, even I find some of the things we managed to achieve on the budget we had hard to believe, and I only wish to be able to publish the cool stuff once we get to the next level. So here is what we are going to do now:
Focus
As we grow we will need to focus on what we do best and shelve the projects where there is no clear business model. Many of our longevity projects will need to be divested. For example, we already shut down Young.AI and other initiatives that were too far ahead of their time. It will be very painful but these projects will be reborn as new companies with laser sharp focus on a business model or non-profit academic initiatives.
Hire Great Senior Executives
All of the deals we made to date were because of the great technology. Typically we had to do many pilots to get to a deal. And internally, we had to go through a lot of experiments that failed to get to a working system. We hired most of the technical talent through competitions on deep learning to ensure that they can perform and outperform, not necessarily know how to present. I made many mistakes when working with pharma and pitched all the wrong things in the wrong manner. We will fix it now and we have the resources to hire the best senior drug discovery and business development talent on the planet. We have a long list of candidates to go through but we need to get the best management in the world. Leaders capable of developing the therapeutic assets to a stage when it is possible to license, and partnering on technology at the executive level. If you are that one industry veteran capable of striking big technology deals or growing the data room for a therapeutic asset to a partnering level quickly, please do send me a note.
Joint Ventures
Our core strength is in algorithm design and the automation of our drug discovery pipeline. When we identify super cool targets we can not just stop the AI development efforts and focus on drug development. To progress the pipeline beyond the basic in vitro assays we need to partner. And we will partner with the smartest people in their respective areas who know biology and chemistry of the target class much better than we do and can tangibly put the drugs on the market.
Excellence in Next-Gen AI
We will continue building our team into a school that some of the most advanced AI scientists would like to join to further upgrade their skills to be able to make the lives of everyone on the planet healthier and better. We will do it globally while preserving the core values and maintaining the highest standards. You saw our papers and from here we can do much better and produce much more impactful stories. We will be at NeurIPS this year. If you are a superstar interested in dedicating your life to curing deadly diseases, let’s meet up.
What this round is not
We are not planning to go nuts on salaries or other expenditures. I will continue to fly economy class and stay in the most competitive hotels. We will continue hiring technical talent through hackathons. The funds will drive validation but will not destroy our culture.
This round will make us better in every way. From dramatically improved corporate governance to the broadest network of partners and advisors most startups can only dream of.
