New York AI chemistry start-up raises $95 million

A chemistry start-up residing in Midtown Manhattan, an area otherwise known for corporate offices, luxury brand stores, and pricey apartments, has secured $95 million in series A financing to use artificial intelligence to discover new drugs.Excelsior Sciences received $70 million from investors, including Deerfield Management, Khosla Ventures, and Sofinnova Partners, and a $25 million grant from New York’s Empire State Development.The company aims to discover small-molecule drugs using chemistry that laboratory robots, rather than human chemists, can perform. “This is chemistry which machines can do and AI can use. It’s like creating a new chemical language that machines can understand,” says Michael Foley, cofounder and CEO of Excelsior. “It is the opposite of what everyone on Earth is doing, which is developing machines to do chemistry.”Excelsior starts with about 2,000 small-molecule drugs already approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. The company’s technology allows it to break these molecules into smaller units, called smart bloccs, that serve as building blocks for new molecules.“It is like taking down the incredibly complex world of synthetic chemistry and shrinking or simplifying it into building blocks which machines can use,” says Jana Jensen, the firm’s cofounder and chief operating officer.Moreover, starting with FDA-approved molecules increases the odds of finding a molecule that works, Foley says. The approach is one of the differences between Excelsior and other AI-based drug-discovery companies that are leaning on generative AI to build new molecules. “Everyone on the number line is going the wrong way with generative AI, making