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Demis Hasabis, co -founder and CEO of Google Deepmind and Nobel Nobel Prize winner in the field of chemistry in 2024, visits the artificial intelligence summit in Paris, on February 10, 2025.
Benoit Tessier | Reuters
On a rare sunny day in London in Google At Deepmind office, Colin Merdak saw that the bank’s deposit from its employer.
It was not his salary. Google has invested in its startup.
The new company was isomorphic laboratories, secret artificial intelligence, Life Sciences startup came out of Google Deepmind after one of the biggest biological breakthroughs over the last 50 years. The check took place in November 2021, and Merdak was on the founder.
As the main business director Deepmind, Merdak was instructed to find a business application for Deepmind Innovation in AI research. With isomorphic, the mercury wanted to make zero on the possibility of Alphafold2, AI systems with the possibility of predicting protein structures.
The Viral Program was developed by Deepmind in 2020 and helped to decide the secret that had been biologists for 50 years. With proper use, it had the potential to find new treatments such as Alzheimer, Parkinson and cancer. The system continues to win Nobel Prize In chemistry.
It also helped Merdak, and the founder of Desomorphi Demis Hasabis, to solve the ultimate goal: “to solve all the disease” through the detection of drugs operating on AI.
“When Alphafold came, I think Demis and I looked at it and we thought,” Well, what could we do with Alphafold? “” Merdak, now president isomorphic, said CNBC in an interview with Video Chat. “Indeed, it was a signal that we could start applying the II in this world of drug detection.”
Hassabis remains as CEO, and simultaneously running Deepmind, Google Division on the forefront efforts of a search company for competition in the current AI technology race. While isomorphic is an independent subdivision of Google Parents AlphabetThe double roles of Hasabis reflect the intertwined relationship between the two sides.
ISOMORPHIC never revealed how much Google initially invested in 2021. But last month, the company blocked its first external financing in 600 -millions, led by Thrive Capital with GV, previously known as Google Ventures as well as additional capital from the alphabet. With its fresh capital, IsomorPhic plans to expand biological drugs and add calculations to feed their work in II.
The drug detection market is expected to reach 71 billion dollars By the price of 2025, when AI continues to change the industry.
On average it may take 10 to 15 years – and sometimes more than 2 billion dollars – For drugs to make it from the bench to the final approval of the nutrition and medicine management. It also costs hundreds of millions of dollars for clinical trials for new potential medicines. For the drugs that pass these tests, it’s hiding the price. But the use of II in drug detection can make the process more effective and less expensive, which will lead to more successful medicines that enter the market.
Since its founding isomorphic has grown to more than 200 people and created partnerships Eli Lily and NovartisTwo of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. They partly pay isomorphic to make sure their long -term rates pay the line. Two partnerships include Operational and Milestone payments, and “have the potential to cost almost $ 3 billion for isomorphic laboratories”, according to the company, minus potential royalties as a result of future drug sales.
Google Deepmind and Isomorphic on Wednesday made Alphafold3 available to the scientific community for non -profit use. The system can “predict the structures and interaction between all life molecules,” Isamorphny said. “This goes beyond the forecasting of proteins to DNA, RNA and Ligands and more, which is important for the promotion of drug detection and biological understanding.”
Use II for “Solving” the disease
The 46 -year -old Merdak wanted to become a doctor who grew up, but his spiciness made him abandon the idea for the benefit of technology and technology. Deepmind research on protein structures told about his interest in medicine.
Alphafold2 announcement in 2020 – a step from the original version of 2018 – adopted the world of life sciences. All because proteins are one of the main building blocks cells that move all the chemical reactions that make up life as we know. In whatever form, they made virtually endless opportunities, solving their function.
If you can predict the form of protein, you can predict its function, and since studies show that many diseases affect incorrectly composed proteins, studies have made waves.
Shortly after the release of Alphafold2 Murdoch and Hassabis, a group of Deepmind staff collected to study the AI system. A few months later, they identified the areas where they thought II could change drug detection, and collect the business plan for isomorphic, which they posted in the alphabet.
Google’s father “thought it was a phenomenal idea,” Murdak said.
Colin Merdak, Chief Business Director, Deepmind, on the central scene during the first day of the 2022 Internet summit on Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal.
John Noonan Sportsfile | Gets the image
The alphabet decided to unscrew the isomorphic with Deepmind, setting the launch using Alphafold technology to deliver biomedical breakthroughs and promoting drug design programs.
In early 2022, the team consisted of just over a dozen people who worked from the King’s Cross, London Technology Center.
Since then, the ISOMorphic has been working in quasi-space, silent mainly about its work and progress. In recent years, ISOMorphic representatives have stated that the company is not yet ready to share our progress, “and that the executives were shying away from the media interview when the company built its technology and added talent.
Deepmind staff who worked on isomorphic did not remain after penetration. Hasabis and Merdak had to hire a team from scratch. They started with C-Suite: Technology Chief Director II, Chief Scientific Director and Chief People. From there, they hired experts in the therapeutic and machine learning.
“We have invested a lot of energy and effort to create what we call an interdisciplinary culture that combines these two types of experience,” Murdak said. “This AI and drug detection blend is absolutely important to do what we do.”
Chess Prodigy, Knight and AI “Rockstar”
48 -year -old Hasabis is one of the most important people in Google.
He co -established Deepmind in 2010 to build a “general appointment” and he Sold a startup in Google in 2014It is reported that from $ 400 to $ 650 million. Deepmind has been one of the key scientific units of AI Google for many years.
But it was subjected to at the end of 2022, when Openai released its chatgpt chatbot, entering the generative II era and forcing Google to step on the accelerator.
The Deepmind and Hassabis value in Google has only increased since then.
Google Combined Deepmind with Google BrainAnother scientific -research unit of AI in a search company to become Google Deepmind in April 2023. Hasabis was subjected to the head of the combined division. Last October, when the Gemini app, which includes direct consumer, was additional power when the Gemini app that includes a direct consumer AI products moved under Google Deepmind Umbrella.
Thanks to dramatic changes to Deepmind since 2023, Hasabis continued its other role CEO in Isomorphic.
“The whole AI talent, led by Demis, they have advanced research talents, (and) many people who can work in any AI laboratory should not be bio-oriented,” said Vin Hanks, a partner in Thrive Capital.
Hanks calls Hasabis “an unusually special entrepreneur”.
People who have known Hasabis for many years describes it as they will be celebrities, expressing admiration, respect and minor air of the mistrust who knows who they are. He chess prodigyNobel Prize winner and, as of 2023, knight – Sir Demis Hasabis.
The Nobel laureate in the field of chemistry Demis Hasabis receives a reward from Sweden Karl Gustaf at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden on December 10, 2024.
Pontus Lundahl | TT | Through Reuters
Krishna Yeshwant, the head of the GV partner, said the Hassabis meeting at the University of Oxford years ago was like a “meeting with a rock -star”. Already the achievements of Hasabis were well known, but he remained accessible and did not turn to Jargon to talk about his work in the II.
“Before the Deepmind was purchased, even then he thought of thinking about breakthroughs,” said Yeshwant.
GV has put in isomorphic with the launch force in both the II and therapeutic drugs. Despite the fact that GV is invested in many areas of technology and biotechnology, isomorphic applied unique as a unique because of how Hasabis thinks.
“In Biotech you conduct these experiments, and sometimes experiments do not work, and sometimes they do. And when they do it, you move humanity somehow,” Yeshwant said. “In technology, this is not always adjusted in this way. We often signed the next client? Did we develop this feature?”
“It is unusual to see a person who accepts some (biotechnological) approach in technology,” said Yeshwant. “Demis, on his merit, did so long ago.”
Hasabis told CNBC in a statement that he believes that improving human health is one of the most important use for II.
“We have this amazing tool that can finally unlock some of the biggest mysteries around the disease and help us overcome them,” Hasabis said in a statement. “The idea of the future, when people are healthier, that’s what really worries me.”
Expanding operations and adding calculations
Now, what isomorPhic is starting to open, the startup states that it plans to use its first external financing to expand in the biological sciences.
Currently, isomorphic can use their general-purpose engine for the rapid development of small molecular drugs-a tablet you can take as a treatment, -Al expansion in biology opens the potential spectrum of diseases that the startup will be able to fight because biological drugs are usually injections, not tablets.
“First of all, we focus on river and immunology with our own internal programs, and therefore we will be able to take them further, run them faster and add programs,” Murdak said.
Isamorphic will also be focused on using cases for Alphafold3.
The new company’s new financing will also be used to calculate the main problem in AI space, where companies need all graphical processing divisions (graphic processors) to which they can access. Isamorphically, you will need to create more models to work more with additional data, both on the AI and therapeutic side.
“Expensive to create a full life scientific company-and this is that they need to invest in the calculation, they need to invest in talent, they need to invest in data they need to invest in asset development,” Hanks said.
