Everyone Wants a Piece of this Scottish Biotech’s AI

Evotec has doubled down on its investment in Exscientia: the German outfit just announced it has invested €15M to take a minority stake.

Sanofi, GSK and Evotec have all jumped at the opportunity to work with Exscientia, a Scottish startup founded in 2012 and incubating in Dundee. Now, Evotec has gone beyond the initial immuno-oncology deal and invested €15M in Exscientia to accelerate its growth in exchange for a minority stake, making Evotec the first strategic shareholder in the Scotland-based company.  This follows partnerships between Exscientia and two big pharma, Sanofi and most recently GSK that could be worth nearly €300M combined.

AI in biotech has really taken off, particularly for Alzheimer’s research. The biggest name in the European arena is BenevolentAI, whose CEO, Jackie Hunter, I recently interviewed about the company’s strategy. Despite its establishment as a leader with its recent purchase of a NVIDIA supercomputer, BenevolentAI seems to have found a competitor in this Scottish biotech, evidenced by pharma’s interest in the startup.

Image via strelka / shutterstock.com