UK’s LabGenius secures €40.9M led by Amsterdam’s M Ventures to advance its drug discovery platform

London-based LabGenius, a drug discovery company, announced that it has secured £35M (approximately €40.96M) in a Series B round of funding. The company specialises in using machine learning to discover new therapeutic antibodies. 

With this round, LabGenius has now raised a total of £58M in funding.

The round was led by Amsterdam’s M Ventures, the corporate VC arm of Merck, a science and technology company. New investors joining the round include Octopus Ventures and LG Corp, along with existing investors Atomico, Kindred Capital, Lux Capital, and Obvious Ventures.

Oliver Hardick of M Ventures and Oliver Sims of Octopus Ventures have joined existing Directors Irina Haivas of Atomico, Leila Zegna of Kindred Capital, James Field (CEO) and Edwin Moses (Independent Chair) to form LabGenius’ new Board of Directors.

Developing next-generation protein therapeutics

LabGenius is a drug discovery company developing next-generation therapeutic antibodies. Its discovery platform, EVA, integrates technologies from artificial intelligence, robotic automation, and synthetic biology. 

The company operates under a hybrid business model, partnering with large biotech and pharmaceutical companies while simultaneously developing its own therapeutic pipeline.

EVA is a smart robotic platform capable of designing, conducting, and learning from experiments autonomously. This closed-loop discovery engine enables rapid identification of high-performing antibodies with non-intuitive designs.

The company is using its platform to tackle the challenge of on-target, off-tumour toxicity in its wholly-owned pipeline. 

LabGenius mentions in a statement that therapeutic antibodies work by binding to surface markers on diseased cells, which are present at higher levels. However, in solid tumours, some healthy cells also express these markers. 

If the therapeutic antibodies cannot distinguish between healthy and diseased cells, they may attack healthy cells, leading to significant toxicity. This issue is a major concern for many therapeutics currently in development.

Traditional methods of antibody optimisation are sequential and inefficient, as improving one property may compromise others. LabGenius employs Multi-Objective Bayesian Optimization (MOBO), an active learning method, to co-optimise antibodies across multiple properties simultaneously. 

This approach is efficient as well as free from human bias, resulting in high-performing antibodies with non-intuitive designs.

Capital utilisation

LabGenius will use the funds to enhance its machine learning-driven discovery platform and advance its portfolio of multispecific antibodies towards clinical development. 

The company aims to leverage its recent collaboration with Sanofi to broaden its platform capabilities, enabling strategic partnerships across various therapeutic modalities.

Dr. James Field, CEO of LabGenius, says, “Being able to engineer complex multispecific antibodies has immense potential value. Over several years, the LabGenius team has pioneered the development of EVA – a discovery platform that’s capable of systematically identifying novel high-performing multispecific antibodies with non-intuitive designs.” 

“I am inspired by the relentless drive that our team has shown in getting us to this important milestone and look forward to working with our investors as we accelerate the development of both our platform and pipeline.”

Brief about M Ventures and Octopus Ventures

Amsterdam’s M Ventures is the strategic, corporate VC fund of Merck. It invests globally in innovative ideas spanning healthcare, life sciences, electronics, and sustainability. The firm focuses on financing novel solutions, creating companies, and making equity investments to drive Merck’s vitality and sustainability.

Octopus Ventures is a venture capital investor in the UK and Europe that backs entrepreneurs and transformative ideas across seven sectors, B2B software, climate tech, consumer tech, deeptech, fintech, biotech and health.

With a portfolio of over 180 businesses, including Zoopla and Depop, the firm invests from early-stage ideas to later growth stages, providing capital, expertise, and partnership. Managing £1.9B, Octopus Ventures invests £200M annually.