Insilico Medicine, an AI drug discovery company based in Hong Kong and Boston, has joined the unicorn club after raising $110 million in a funding round led by Hong Kong-headquartered asset manager Value Partners Group.
Insilico said on Wednesday the Series E round puts its valuation at more than $1 billion. The company didn’t name other investors who participated in the round. Its previous backers include U.S. private equity giant Warburg Pincus, Chinese biotech-focused firm Qiming Venture Partners, Chinese pharma billionaire Li Ge’s WuXi, as well as HongShan and Hillhouse.
The company said it will use the proceeds to refine its AI models and to ramp up the development of its portfolio of 30 AI-discovered drug candidates. Its lead drug candidate, a potential drug for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung disease, has shown positive results in a mid-stage human trial in the U.S., the company said in November. Insilico added that this prospective drug, called Rentosertib, has shown potential in treating aging-related diseases.
“If, in the next five years, we can get Rentosertib approved, we will make history,” said Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and co-CEO of Insilico Medicine, in a video interview on Thursday.
Established in 2014, Insilico is among the companies that deploy AI and robotics in hopes of speeding up the time-consuming drug development process and improving its success rate. Insilico said its technology could shorten the early-stage drug discovery process to 12 to 18 months, compared to 30 to 48 months using the conventional method. It has recently deployed a humanoid robot at its laboratory in the mainland city of Suzhou to help with tasks such as lab supervision.
Insilico’s Rentosertib has gone further than most AI-discovered drugs in a space often marked by failures. The company has also licensed some of its drug candidates to China’s Fosun Pharma, Italy’s Menarini Group and America’s Exelixis in deals that are worth more than $2.1 billion combined, while garnering over $1.4 billion by providing its AI software to help clients discover novel drugs.
Insilico filed for a Hong Kong initial public offering in 2023 and 2024, but both applications lapsed in a lukewarm market. Zhavoronkov said he is still considering taking the company public in Hong Kong, but declined to provide a timeline.
“We didn’t go IPO last year because we were waiting for the Phase 2 readout [of Rentosertib],” he said. “If it would be up to me, I would do it quicker because right now it’s a very favorable market environment. But we would need to get some regulatory support because there are a lot of rules.”
Insilico’s peer Xtalpi went public in Hong Kong in a $127 million IPO in June 2024. Shares of the Shenzhen-based company have risen more than 20% since then amid an AI fever in China that’s fueled by home-grown startup DeepSeek. Xtalpi boasted a market cap of about $3.3 billion as of Thursday.
