Google has a long history of investing in healthcare artificial intelligence, especially focusing on pharmaceutical development, and is continuing to bet big on the sector, according to CB Insights' March 31 newsletter.
Across various biotechnology fields, Google made the most investments and strategic partnerships in drug research and development since 2019, carving out a place for itself in the field. In 2020, it went on to release AlphaFold from its Alphabet branch DeepMind, which mapped the structures of proteins from their amino acid building blocks using AI to great attention.
Then in 2021, DeepMind released a second spinout, Isomorphic labs, which also applies AI to the drug discovery process. The same year, Google Ventures was part of a $400 million funding round for a machine learning drug discovery startup, Insitro.
So far in 2022, Google has already invested in four AI start-ups in the pharmaceutical research and development field; BenchSci, Seismic Therapeutics, LifeMine Therapeutics, and Celsius Therapeutics.
These investments signal that Google is pushing to the forefront of health AI and pharmaceuticals and judging from their pattern, they're not close to stopping yet, according to the report.