Recursion to buy AI rival Exscientia

The business of using artificial intelligence to find new drugs is consolidating. The AI-powered drug discovery firm Recursion Pharmaceuticals will buy Exscientia in an all-stock deal that values Exscientia at roughly $650 million . The transaction is expected to close in early 2025, and the resulting company will have the Recursion name, according to an announcement of the deal . In the announcement, the companies portray the merger as creating an end-to-end drug discovery company by combining Recursion’s biology expertise and Exscientia’s chemistry know-how. “Exscientia’s precision chemistry tools and capabilities, including its newly commissioned automated small molecule synthesis platform, will augment our tech-enabled biology and chemistry exploration, hit discovery and translational capabilities,” Recursion CEO Chris Gibson says in the announcement. Exscientia launched in 2012 in the UK with a focus on AI-powered small-molecule drug design. It later added automated synthesis and testing capabilities . Exscientia recently shed a quarter of