- Isomorphic Labs is reportedly in early talks to raise at a valuation of $40B or more.
- Bloomberg says the top end could be $50B. The round has not closed.
- The talks follow a $2.1B Series B in May, with first trials expected by the end of 2026.
When Isomorphic Labs raised $2.1 billion in May, it did not say what the round valued the company at. Less than five months later, it is reportedly in talks to put a price on itself: at least $40 billion.
Bloomberg reported that the DeepMind spinout is in early talks to raise new funds at that valuation, according to people familiar with the matter. One of them said the round could value the company at as much as $50 billion. The financing has not closed, and details could change. Neither the size of the round nor the investors involved have been reported.
The price tag arrives as investors pour money into AI platforms that promise to cut the time and cost of finding new medicines. Grand View Research estimates that AI in drug discovery was a $2.3 billion market in 2025 and will reach $13.8 billion by 2033, growing at a compound annual rate of 24.8% from 2026.
A $40 billion valuation would be nearly three times that 2033 forecast for the whole sector.
Two rounds, one lead investor
Isomorphic was founded in 2021 to apply DeepMind’s AI advances to drug discovery. Demis Hassabis, the DeepMind co-founder, led it and shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with John Jumper for AlphaFold, an AI system that predicts protein structures. Max Jaderberg is president.
The company is based in London, with offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Lausanne, Switzerland, and had more than 350 staff in May, Bloomberg reported.
It works through its Isomorphic Drug Design Engine, known as IsoDDE, a set of AI models that predict molecular structures and interactions to help researchers find and refine drug candidates. The startup develops medicines in-house and with partners including Eli Lilly, Novartis, and Johnson & Johnson, and has said it will focus on cancer and immune disorders.
Its first external round was $600 million in March 2025, led by Thrive Capital with GV, Alphabet’s venture arm, and Alphabet. Tech Funding News (TFN) first reported the Series B talks on May 11, and the $2.1 billion round closed on May 12, again led by Thrive. Alphabet and GV returned, and MGX, Temasek, CapitalG, and the UK Sovereign AI Fund joined as new investors.
Together, the two rounds bring Isomorphic’s external funding to $2.7 billion. BioCentury noted that the Series B trailed only Altos Labs’ $3 billion round in 2022 among biotech venture rounds. TFN also examined the cap table behind the May round.
Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Alphabet and Google, said: “This trajectory is encouraging, and this funding will be used to accelerate the work and bring important interventions to market with greater speed.”
Dr. Krishna Yeshwant, managing partner at GV, said: “We believe their approach can create important medicines that will be better understood earlier in the process, pushing the boundaries of what’s been possible before.”
How $40B compares with rival AI drug discovery companies
Chai Discovery, a San Francisco startup founded in 2024, raised $400 million at a $3.8 billion valuation in a Series C announced on July 14. Index Ventures led, with Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, and Dimension. The round took Chai’s total funding above $600 million, and Chai says Eli Lilly, Pfizer, and Novartis have started adopting its models.
Xaira Therapeutics launched in April 2024 with more than $1 billion from ARCH Venture Partners and Foresite Capital, joined by Sequoia Capital and others. London-based Basecamp Research raised a $140 million Series C on September 23 at an $800 million valuation, according to Reuters, as TFN reported.
At $40 billion, Isomorphic would be valued at more than 10 times Chai and 50 times Basecamp. It would also sit far from the European norm: TFN’s analysis of PitchBook data found the median pre-money valuation of European AI startups at about one-eighth of the US figure.
The test is still the clinic
Reuters reported in January that Hassabis, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, expects Isomorphic’s first clinical trials by the end of 2026. That is a year later than the end-2025 target he had given in 2025.
A valuation near $40 billion would assume a great deal about medicines that are not yet proven in people. The next number investors watch may not be a valuation at all, but whether the first Isomorphic candidates enter human trials before the end of 2026, as the company expects.
