In a recent development, Flagship Pioneering, the venture capital firm known for backing Moderna MRNA has successfully secured a whopping $3.6 billion in funding.
What Happened: Flagship Pioneering has raised $2.6 billion for its eighth fund and an additional $1 billion for parallel funds. These parallel funds will be invested in specific sectors such as diagnostics or therapeutics. The venture firm is also planning to raise more funds for its eighth fund later this year. The funds are intended to launch a series of new biotech companies that will harness the power of generative artificial intelligence for drug discovery, The Financial Times reported on Wednesday.
Noubar Afeyan, the founder of Flagship, stated that a significant part of the investments from the eighth fund will be directed towards platforms that employ AI in innovative ways for drug development. The firm is considering ideas like using AI to create novel chemical materials for medicines and automating hypothesis generation for scientists.
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Why It Matters: Flagship’s successful fundraising signifies a positive trend for venture investment in biotech. This sector has been recovering from a downturn triggered by the end of a pandemic-induced boom and a series of interest rate hikes. Flagship’s investment strategy is increasingly focusing on biotechs developing individual drugs, with at least a quarter of investments from its last fund deployed through its Pioneering Medicines arm.
In April, the global AI in healthcare market size was valued at $20.9 billion and is expected to reach $148.4 billion by 2029. This indicates a growing interest in AI-driven healthcare solutions.
Moreover, there is growing investment in healthtech sector. For instance, in June, SoftBank Group Corp SFTBF announced a joint venture with Tempus AI Inc TEM to enhance precision medicine in Japan using AI.
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This story was generated using Benzinga Neuro and edited by Pooja Rajkumari
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