en.Wedoany.com Reported - MoleculeMind, a Chinese AI protein design platform company, has completed its Series A financing round, with cumulative funding exceeding $100 million. Investors in this round include Blue Bridge Capital, Pudong Venture Capital, COFCO Emerging Industry Fund, Oriental Fortune Capital, Fosun Venture Capital, Guofang Venture Capital, Sepax Technologies (688758), Infiniti, Caixin Capital, and Zhengding, among others. Existing shareholders Cathay Biotech (688065) and Xinhang Capital also participated in the follow-on investment.
Professor Xu Jinbo, founder of MoleculeMind, is the inventor of the AI protein structure prediction algorithm RaptorX-Contact. The company's self-developed high-precision structure prediction base model, MMFold, surpasses all open-source models in predicting antibody-antigen complex interfaces in the authoritative FoldBench test, leading models such as AlphaFold 3 in the field of high-precision structure prediction. Its AI de novo biopharmaceutical design platform, MMDesign, achieved a target hit rate exceeding 90% in tests across 12 real clinical targets, with antibody affinity designed against TNFα reaching the picomolar level. While traditional methods require screening antibodies from libraries of hundreds of millions, MMDesign only needs to validate 14 to 50 candidate molecules in wet experiments to obtain high-affinity antibodies.
MoleculeMind has built an AI bioengineering infrastructure, MoleculeOS (MOS), based on its self-developed NewOrigin multimodal protein foundational model. This platform streamlines the engineering workflow of "AI design—wet lab validation—model evolution." Leveraging this platform, MoleculeMind has solved the challenge of pH-sensitive antibody design that traditional high-throughput screening failed to address, achieving a 60-fold difference in affinity across different pH environments. For pipelines with severe expression deficiencies, it has increased expression levels by over 400-fold, with monomer content exceeding 90%. In the field of green biomanufacturing, the company collaborates with industrial partners to perform directed evolution of industrial enzymes, increasing strain productivity severalfold.
Currently, the MOS platform has been validated by leading industrial partners in sectors including innovative drugs, food, and new chemical materials. Customers include top global multinational pharmaceutical companies by market capitalization, US biomedical venture capital institutions, Chinese innovative drug companies, synthetic biology leaders, listed food companies, and new chemical materials groups. Multiple partners have initiated follow-up collaborations after completing their first projects.
Huang Bohao, founder of Blue Bridge Capital, believes that MoleculeMind possesses original capabilities in AI protein technology and has translated its technical prowess into verifiable commercial milestones. Chen Huawei, partner at Oriental Fortune Capital, stated that the team has established payable and verifiable capabilities in scenarios such as antigen-antibody complex prediction and conditionally activated protein design. Ye Lijuan, Managing Director of Fosun Venture Capital, noted that MoleculeMind has built a full-stack, system-level protein design capability. The investment lead at COFCO Emerging Industry Fund believes the company demonstrates commercial potential in areas like industrial enzyme design and biomaterial optimization. Huang Xueying, Chairman of Sepax Technologies, indicated complementarity between the two companies in separation, purification, and protein engineering. Dr. Yang Chen, President of Cathay Biotech, pointed out the company's achievements in directed evolution of industrial enzymes and strain productivity enhancement. A representative from Pudong Venture Capital stated support for MoleculeMind in building an AI bioengineering R&D center.
MoleculeMind has established a multi-tiered business model encompassing platform licensing, joint R&D, and proprietary pipelines. The MOS platform has been opened for access to leading pharmaceutical companies. Professor Xu Jinbo stated that the underlying technological revolution in AI protein design has completed theoretical validation, and the next step is to advance into large-scale industrial application. This round of financing will be used to drive the global industrialization of its full-stack technology system.
This article is compiled by Wedoany. All AI citations must indicate the source as "Wedoany". If there is any infringement or other issues, please notify us promptly, and we will modify or delete it accordingly. Email: news@wedoany.com
