There’s a new high-flyer on the biotech scene and it’s turning heads in more ways than one. Recursion Pharmaceuticals saw its shares skyrocket by a whopping 121% on Wednesday, following a hefty $50 million investment from tech titan Nvidia.
Recursion isn’t your run-of-the-mill biotech firm. It’s making waves with its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline and speed up the drug discovery process. The influx of funds from Nvidia isn’t just an endorsement, it’s a turbocharger for Recursion’s work in AI-fueled drug development.
There’s more to this investment than just a big check. Both companies have joined forces to collaborate on software specifically designed for the biotech industry. The objective? To accelerate the creation of patient treatments for a wide array of diseases and health conditions.
The plot thickens when you consider that Recursion plans to lean heavily on Nvidia’s cloud services to develop its cutting-edge, AI-empowered drug discovery models. Nvidia, no stranger to this game, launched BioNeMo earlier this year, an AI drug discovery platform targeting the biotech sector.
Chris Gibson, Recursion’s CEO, expressed his optimism about the partnership, stating, “With our powerful dataset and NVIDIA’s accelerated computing capabilities, we intend to create groundbreaking foundation models in biology and chemistry at a scale unlike anything that has ever been released in the biological space.”
Recursion sits on a treasure trove of data, boasting a library of more than 3 trillion searchable gene and compound relationships. This vast database forms the backbone of the company’s ambitious drug discovery program.
Interestingly, the Nvidia investment was carried out as a private investment in a public equity. However, the terms of the deal remain behind the curtain.
Earlier this year, Recursion offered a glimpse into its 2023 roadmap, which includes progress reports on four drugs it currently has under development for rare diseases, and the details on a newly launched web application dubbed ‘MolRec’.
The share price of Recursion soared to a high of $14.99 in Wednesday’s trading, before scaling back a bit to an 80% gain. This rapid surge added more than $1 billion to its market valuation. The company went public in April 2021, hitting a post-IPO high of $42.81 before experiencing a 72% drop.
This latest investment by Nvidia is a significant vote of confidence and adds a new chapter to the story of Recursion. It’s a tale that is being closely watched by both tech and biotech investors, as the line between the two industries continues to blur.