Isomorphic Labs, the Alphabet spinoff chasing AI-driven drug discovery, is reportedly negotiating a fresh round that would price the company at $40B to $50B, Bloomberg reported. The report did not say how much capital the company is seeking.
The range marks a dramatic markup. Isomorphic last raised at roughly $2.1B in May, so the new talks would amount to a twentyfold re-rating in under six months.
IsoDDE, the company’s flagship platform, automates one of the hardest parts of drug development: binding pocket discovery, or locating the precise spot on a disease-causing cell where a drug can attach. Cell surfaces are extraordinarily complex, shift constantly and can only be mapped with specialized microscopes, which makes finding a viable pocket slow, manual work.
The company reported in February that IsoDDE clears the nearest competing tool at locating binding pockets by more than 50%. It also predicts protein-ligand complexes about twice as accurately as AlphaFold, the Google DeepMind model whose creators shared the 2024 Nobel prize in chemistry, and models antibody interactions about 2.3 times better, according to the company’s own benchmarks.
Unlike most AI biotech bets, Isomorphic already has signed contracts. Nearly $3B of deals were signed in 2024 with Eli Lilly and Novartis, and January brought a similar collaboration with Johnson & Johnson, all centered on small molecules. A raise near the top of the range would make the clearest case yet that pharma will pay AI premiums at scale.
