London’s Air Street Capital has seen early wins with startups focused on AI-powered drug discovery, not ChatGPT knockoffs.
-- Air Street Capital, a venture firm focused on early-stage artificial intelligence startups, has raised a second fund worth $121 million with backing from Spotify Technology SA’s Chief Executive Officer Daniel Ek, in another sign of endless appetite for the trendy tech.
The field of drug discovery is seeing renewed interest from investors and large companies. In August, venture firm Andreessen Horowitz led a $200 million investment into Genesis Therapeutics, a California startup applying AI to uncover new medicines. BlackRock Inc. and Nvidia Corp. joined the investment. In July, Nvidia invested $50 million into Recursion Pharmaceuticals.
Benaich has already financed another biotech company with his second fund: Profluent, a startup using generative AI to design proteins. He plans to make more investments in this sector, convinced by the progress AI methods have shown in biology. “These problems that were previously intractable are now solvable,” he said.
Alex Devereson, a McKinsey & Co. partner who advises biotech companies, said there’s “significant potential” for new businesses in the field, although he believes they will face weak capital markets and increased competition from traditional pharmaceutical firms. He expects to see an uptick in mergers and acquisitions “in the next few years.”
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