Nvidia Corp. is among the investors backing a new Boston company that aims to increase the speed and accuracy of how medicine is created.
Superluminal Medicines Inc. launched Monday with a $33 million funding round. The investment was led by RA Capital Management, but Superluminal said there was also significant participation from Insight Partners and chipmaker Nvidia. Gaingels, a VC investment firm in Burlington, Vermont, also joined in the financing.
Nvidia declined to comment on why the company invested in Superluminal. However, this isn’t the first life sciences company with an eye for AI that the chipmaker has funded. In July, Nvidia invested $50 million in drug discovery firm Recursion Pharmaceuticals Inc. The startup’s stock soared 80% following the announcement.
In a statement to BostInno, Superluminal CEO Cony D'Cruz said he believes “tech investors are interested in how the combination of computer hardware and software can be used to accelerate various aspects of drug discovery and development. The positive impact makes the drug discovery process more efficient and expands the applications for hardware and software.”
Cutting down the drug discovery timeline
Superluminal is led by D'Cruz, a venture partner at RA Ventures. D'Cruz is also the former chief business officer at Schrödinger. D'Cruz was with Schrödinger for nearly a decade, including when the company went public in early 2020.
D'Cruz’s Superluminal co-founder is Ajay Yekkirala, the startup’s SVP and head of discovery. Yekkirala was the co-founder and CSO at Blue Therapeutics.
Following the artificial intelligence boom earlier this year, Superluminal is joining a growing number of life sciences companies incorporating big data and AI into their platforms.
Superluminal says that by combining its biology and chemistry expertise, machine learning, and proprietary big data infrastructure, it can create “candidate-ready compounds with unprecedented speed.”
The company said the new funding will be used to advance Superluminal’s pipeline of small molecule drug discovery programs. Superluminal is focusing first on G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) targets. GPCRs are a family of membrane proteins that act as regulators in cellular signaling.
“The decision to focus on GPCRs was driven by our desire to study proteins in their natural state. Our approach allows us to interrogate proteins in a dynamic sense, exploring the multitude of conformations a protein can adopt,” D'Cruz said in a statement. “By understanding and leveraging these dynamic properties, we can intervene in a positive manner within the natural context of the cell and the body.”
Superluminal said it plans to identify a lead program candidate in the “near term.”
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