London-based LabGenius, which uses ML to find and design antibody therapies to treat cancer, raised a £35M Series B led by Merck's VC arm, M Ventures
Mimi Billing / Sifted :
Context & Ripple Effects
LabGenius had already established an AI-and-robotic-automation approach to protein drug discovery in its earlier Series A, making this round a follow-on financing step rather than a newly formed AI-drug-discovery effort.
The deal also sits alongside London’s broader cluster of AI biomedical companies, including Causaly’s Series B for AI-driven biomedical research. M Ventures’ lead gives LabGenius backing from the venture arm of a major pharma company.
First-order effects
- LabGenius gains £35M to advance its ML-based antibody-discovery and design work for cancer therapies.
- M Ventures becomes the lead investor, giving Merck’s venture arm direct financial exposure to LabGenius’s therapeutic-discovery platform.
Second-order effects
- The round raises the bar for other AI drug-discovery startups seeking later-stage capital: investors can compare their technical platforms and disease focus with a company backed by a pharma-linked fund.
- Strategic venture participation makes the boundary between pharma R&D and AI-biotech financing more porous, even though the reported investment alone does not establish a commercial partnership.
Third-order effects
- If pharma venture arms continue to lead platform-company rounds, AI drug discovery may be financed increasingly through investors that can evaluate both computational capability and therapeutic development risk.
- That dynamic could concentrate funding around companies able to show a credible path from AI models to drug candidates, rather than around general-purpose biomedical AI claims.
The trend: AI drug discovery is moving from early platform funding toward larger rounds in which pharma-affiliated investors help select technologies with therapeutic-development relevance.