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Israel-based CytoReason, which uses artificial intelligence to develop disease research models, said on Wednesday it raised $80 million in a private funding round with participation from Nvidia, Pfizer, Thermo Fisher and venture capital firm OurCrowd.

Six of the world's top ten pharmaceutical companies use his technology

CytoReason said it plans to expand the application of its model to more indications and increase its proprietary molecular and clinical data. The company said that six of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies in the world use its technology to make data-driven decisions in therapeutic areas such as immunology, inflammation, immuno-oncology, metabolism, etc. through the computational disease models of the AI ​​platform.

The company also plans to open an office in Cambridge, Massachusetts later this year.

The company said that shortening R&D time and increasing the probability of technical and regulatory success (PTRS) are the top priorities for life science companies, and speed, safety and accuracy are critical when making asset-related R&D decisions. CytoReason provides the pharmaceutical industry with molecular-level insights and valuable AI tools to help the industry improve the success rate of Phase II clinical trials and optimize their R&D portfolios.

Media reports said that in 2022, Pfizer expanded its partnership with CytoReason, making a $20 million investment that could reach $110 million by 2027.

CytoReason said it looks forward to using the new funds to accelerate its growth and further solidify its position in the market, enabling more pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to improve the speed and accuracy of development across therapeutic areas, thereby benefiting more patients around the world.

Kimberly Powell, vice president and general manager of healthcare at Nvidia, said:

“Over the past year, CytoReason has enhanced its platform with NVIDIA’s latest accelerated computing and AI platforms, achieving more than 10x speedup for inference workloads. Our ongoing collaboration with CytoReason will help more life science companies benefit from CytoReason’s predictive clinical insights.”

AI drug development is in the ascendant, and Nvidia has its own layout

Wall Street Journal previously mentioned that according to BCG's latest research, AI-generated drug molecules have a success rate of 80%-90% in Phase I clinical trials, while the historical average is about 50%. In addition to Phase I, the success rate of AI in discovering drug molecules in Phase II clinical trials is 40%. The results show that AI has a strong ability to design or identify molecules with drug properties, further proving the clinical potential of AI in discovering molecules.

At Nvidia's GTC conference, 90 events were related to healthcare/life sciences, ranking first among all industries, surpassing a number of popular fields such as automobiles, cloud services, hardware/semiconductors, etc.

Novo Nordisk, the world's hottest pharmaceutical giant, has officially announced at GTC that it will work with Nvidia to build a supercomputer in Denmark. A spokesperson for the Novo Nordisk Foundation said that artificial intelligence has the potential to completely change the way complex scientific research is conducted in the health and life sciences fields. This also represents Nvidia's ambition to participate in this field.

According to TD Securities, the digital transformation of the healthcare industry has generated more than $1 billion in revenue (including direct and indirect revenue) for technology companies, and the market size may reach tens of billions of dollars over time.

Analysts pointed out that currently, the application of AI technology in healthcare covers drug discovery, medical equipment and imaging, as well as digital medical systems, and Nvidia has already made arrangements in all of these areas.Subsequently, as the R&D and capital expenditures of the huge global healthcare industry shift toward generative artificial intelligence, Nvidia will be able to generate substantial revenue with its powerful computing platform and AI software stack.

In addition, NVIDIA announced a partnership with two leading medical companies, Johnson & Johnson and GE Healthcare, to reach an agreement on the application of artificial intelligence in surgery and the introduction of artificial intelligence into the field of medical imaging. In addition, NVIDIA also launched more than 20 AI-driven healthcare tools at the conference.