Isomorphic Labs, the AI-first drug design company spun out of Google DeepMind, said on May 12 that it has raised $2.1 billion in a Series B round led by Thrive Capital — more than triple the $600 million it raised in its first external round in March 2025.
The round drew existing backers Alphabet and GV alongside new investors MGX, Temasek, CapitalG and the UK Sovereign AI Fund. The company did not disclose a valuation.
A bigger war chest for "the engine"
Isomorphic said the capital will go toward three things: powering its AI drug design engine, IsoDDE; expanding global operations; and progressing its pipeline of therapeutic programs toward the clinic. It also plans to keep hiring across AI, engineering, drug design and clinical roles at its sites in London (its headquarters), Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Lausanne, Switzerland.
"Over the past year, our conviction in the team has only deepened as they've made significant progress," said Thrive Capital CEO Joshua Kushner, whose firm has now led two consecutive rounds. Alphabet President and CIO Ruth Porat said "the application of AI in healthcare offers a profound opportunity" and pointed to Isomorphic's "extraordinary progress in harnessing AI to accelerate drug discovery."
From AlphaFold to a drug pipeline
Founded in 2021 and led by CEO Sir Demis Hassabis — who also runs Google DeepMind — and President Max Jaderberg, Isomorphic builds on the protein-structure breakthroughs of AlphaFold, extending the approach to small molecules and other modalities to design drugs against historically difficult targets.
"Our drug design engine works, and it's giving us a repeatable way to design new medicines for a wide range of diseases," Jaderberg said. Hassabis framed the raise as a scaling moment: "Now that we have shown our approach is fundamentally sound, our focus is on scaling our technology to its full potential."
The company already has revenue-bearing partnerships with Novartis, Eli Lilly and Johnson & Johnson. Its 2024 deals with Lilly and Novartis carried roughly $3 billion in combined potential value — about $45 million upfront from Lilly with more than $1.7 billion in milestones, and $37.5 million upfront from Novartis with up to $1.2 billion more. Hassabis has said the company expects its first AI-designed drug candidates, including a cancer program, to enter Phase 1 clinical trials around 2026.
Why it matters
The raise is one of the largest yet for an "AI for science" company, and it lands as investors scrutinize returns on the industry's broader infrastructure spending. Drug discovery is among the most-cited proof points for that spending, and a multi-billion-dollar check — including from a UK government fund betting on a homegrown champion — signals that appetite hasn't cooled. The real test now shifts to the clinic: whether IsoDDE's designs translate into drugs that work in patients.
