Al Gore Led Fund Leads $95M Investment in Toronto’s BenchSci to Leverage AI to Accelerate Drug Discovery

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Al Gore’s investment firm led a $95 million funding round for a Toronto-based company that uses artificial intelligence to help pharma giants reduce the time and cost of the drug discovery process.

Generation Investment Management, chaired by former U.S. Vice President, backs past investors Canada’s Innovia Capital and Golden Ventures, U.S.-based TCV and affiliate F-Prime Capital Partners In response, he led growth equity financing for Benchsai Analytics. With the Johnson family, the founders of Fidelity. This is Generation’s third transaction in Canada, following investments in AlayaCare Inc. and Benevity Inc. in 2021.

Terms were not disclosed, but Matt Golden, managing partner at Golden, said it was a complex process that has seen financiers increasingly demand start-ups to guarantee a greater share of the proceeds at the time of sale. He said it was a “clean deal” with no formal and structured terms.

Multiple investors have stepped forward to lead the acquisition, with Benchsai CEO Lilan Berenzon saying it’s “not a down round” after the company raised US$50 million last year. He said that meant it was at least maintaining its valuation. Lack of structure and devaluation puts Benchsai in a rare spot in a tech-wide shakeout where companies run out of money or face nasty funding from investors.

“We weren’t in a situation where we needed to raise money, but that’s why we want to raise money,” Berenson said. I think.” He added that he expects venture capital investment levels “will get even worse,” despite having already dropped significantly over the past year.

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BenchSci powers artificial intelligence to quickly peruse millions of scientific publications. Tens of thousands of researchers use the company’s online subscription software tools to use which antibodies (proteins the human body produces to fight invaders) and reagents (substances that cause chemical reactions) in early trials of new drugs. quickly determine what is best to do.

BenchSci’s products are used by 16 of the world’s 20 largest pharmaceutical companies, saving months and significant costs in drug discovery. In its 2021 annual report, Novartis said scientists used BenchSci to select the best antibodies and reagents, reducing costly and unproductive experiments and accelerating projects by months. As a result, it has saved US$14 million from 2018 to 2021.

Anthony Wolfe, growth equity partner at social impact and sustainability investor Generation Inc., said his company described Benchsai Inc. during a due diligence study as “a rabid customer love and But I have something to say,” he said. “The largest biopharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars annually on their preclinical R&D teams, so any degree of efficiency makes sense for them.”

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He said the software tools available to early drug discovery researchers were relatively limited, and BenchSci was a welcome response to the “massive innovation crisis” in preclinical R&D with rising drug discovery costs. I added that there is.

BenchSci was founded in 2015 by Tom Leung, David Chen, Elvis Wianda, and Belenzon after meeting through the Institute for Creative Destruction at the University of Toronto. Since the pandemic began, the company has grown rapidly, more than doubling its revenue in the past 18 months and expanding its team from 100 to over 400 employees in 2020. Berenzon expected his company to double its revenue this year, but it didn’t. Reveal absolute numbers.

Asked if generative AI companies like OpenAI could threaten BenchSci, Veraison said: We stay agile, adopt new technologies to solve problems faster, and as an organization we never stand still. ”

“Our conclusion is that the large language models used in generative AI, as long as we can incorporate them, will benefit BenchSci over time,” said Wolfe of Generation. added.