ByteDance spin-off Anew Labs raises US$290m as AI drug developers enjoy fundraising boom
China is seeing a fresh fundraising boom for AI drug developers, with start-ups including a ByteDance spin-off raising hundreds of millions of dollars this week as investors rush to back domestic challengers to Anthropic and Isomorphic Labs. Anew Labs, a Shanghai-based AI drug discovery firm that was formerly a unit of Chinese tech giant ByteDance, has raised US$290 million at a valuation of…
ByteDance spin-off Anew Labs has raised US$290 million in a US$1.5 billion valuation, positioning itself as a formidable rival to AI drug developers Anthropic and Isomorphic Labs. Anew Labs, previously part of ByteDance, offers a suite of AI models aimed at predicting and designing biomolecular structures. Key models include AnewFold and Protenix, an open-source replication of Google DeepMind's AlphaFold 3.
The company currently has four drugs in development, including an oral small-molecule drug for immunological diseases. Anew Labs launched its AnewDDE agentic platform to streamline fragmented AI workflows in drug discovery. The surge in AI drug development funding is evident, with Danish pharma giant Novo announcing a partnership with Anthropic to accelerate new medicine creation using Anthropic's models.
Chinese firms like Nutshell Therapeutics and AIPher have also successfully raised funds to advance their AI-driven drug development initiatives.
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