GGV Capital is a global venture capital firm that separated into two distinct firms and separate brands as of March 29, 2024. The Asia partnership, Granite Asia, is headquartered in Singapore and invests in the APAC region, including Southeast Asia, Japan, China, India, and Australia. The U.S. partnership, Notable Capital, is based in Silicon Valley with offices in San Francisco and New York, and invests in the U.S., Israel, Europe, and Latin America.

GGV Capital

BlueRun Ventures is a venture capital firm with offices in the United States, Shanghai, Beijing, and Korea. BlueRun invests in information technology, mobile, and consumer technologies, with an emphasis on mobile opportunities.  BRV has invested in over 160 companies, with select exits from PayPal (acquired by eBay), Waze (acquired by Google), Topsy (acquired by Apple), Coupa (NASDAQ: COUP), and more.  In 2005, BlueRun changed its name from Nokia Venture Partners. While branded as Nokia Venture Partners, the firm helped to build emerging market leaders such as Airgo, Bitfone, Cornice, PayPal, Wavemarket, and WiderThan.

BlueRun Ventures

Baidu is a search engine that enables individuals to obtain information and finds what they need. Baidu offers functional online search, Tieba community search, industry-based vertical search, mp3 search, portal channels, and instant messaging services. Its products include Baidu Webpage, Baidu Video, Baidu Map, hao123.com, BaiduPedia, Baidu Input, Baidu Toolbar, TTPlayer, Iqiyi, and Sky Software.

Baidu

Legend Capital, a subsidiary of Legend Holdings Ltd., started its vintage year in April, 2001 with a mission to become a top-notch and the most respected venture capital investment manager in China.  Managing up to US$700 million across four funds, Legend Capital focuses on driving high-growth ventures with operations substantially based in China or on markets related to China.  Legend Capital mainly invests in early stage IT companies, specifically, in sectors of network applications and services, outsourcing and professional services, Infrastructure (IC design/key components), and mid-market growth stage companies in the fields of consumer goods, clean technology, health care, equipment manufacturing and modern services.  Among over 60 portfolio companies are Joyo.com (acquired by Amazon.com), SinoCom (0299.HK), Solarfun Power (Nasdaq: SOLF), Spreadtrum Communications (Nasdaq: SPRD), China Sunshine Paper (2002.HK), and VanceInfo (NYSE:VIT), Eyang (0117.HK), etc.  As an active investor, Legend Capital provides its portfolio companies extensive business resources and tailored services to assist with business development, company image building, and other critical company building activities on Chinese market so as to add value and maximize returns. Legend Capital is proud and thankful that it has the opportunity to blaze a trail with its innovative practice for China's venture capital industry.

Legend Capital

Founded by Mr. Hesong Tang and Ms. Maggie Yang, Xiang He Capital is a venture capital fund focusing on early and growth stage investments in TMT industry in China. Before starting Xiang He, Mr. Tang was Baidu's VP of Corporate Development, overseeing strategic investments and M&A, and Ms. Yang was Baidu's Managing Director of Corporate Development. They have led a series of landscape-changing deals such as iQiyi, Qunar, PPS and 91 wireless, which all have a significant impact on China's TMT industry. Xiang He's team have a background from Corporate Development of Baidu, other leading internet companies, and VC funds. The team is particularly strong in strategic analysis and has deep connections in the internet industry. Xiang He's investments are driven by strategic analysis and collective wisdom.

Xianghe Capital

Verity venture focuses on the active organization model, invests in an entrepreneurial way

Verity venture

BioMap

Founded in 2020 by Robin Li and Wei Liu, BioMap is a disruptive life science AI company responsible for building xTrimo, the first and largest protein-centric large language model platform. Their technology allows scientists to model life more accurately, from proteins to a system level, and extract novel insights and predictions from limited data. Supported by an international, cross-functional team of over 300 experts, BioMap is solving critical, protein-related drug development problems and charting a course to radically improve patients’ lives.

<div>China-based BioMap specializes in discovering the intricacies of life using AI foundation models. The company's flagship platform, xTrimo, a cross-modal transformer representation of interactome and multi-omics, is reportedly the first and largest protein-centric LLM platform that has been trained on an extensive proprietary dataset, containing over 6 billion proteins, 100 billion protein-protein interactions, and trillions of single-cell gene expression measurements. The platform facilitates the rapid and precise generation of diverse proteins, even with limited labeled data. Its applications span therapeutic antibodies, industrial enzymes, and novel proteins across various fields.&nbsp;</div>

Artificial intelligence is identifying and testing new therapies faster than ever.

AI Drug Discovery

Biomap sets new global ‘biocomputing’ hub in Hong Kong

Sanofi

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies for drug discovery services such as target selection, validation and lead optimization.

<div>
 
 China-based BioMap specializes in discovering the intricacies of life using AI foundation models. The company's flagship platform, xTrimo, a cross-modal transformer representation of interactome and multi-omics, is reportedly the first and largest protein-centric LLM platform that has been trained on an extensive proprietary dataset, containing over 6 billion proteins, 100 billion protein-protein interactions, and trillions of single-cell gene expression measurements. The platform facilitates the rapid and precise generation of diverse proteins, even with limited labeled data. Its applications span therapeutic antibodies, industrial enzymes, and novel proteins across various fields.&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 
 
 BioMap has established strategic partnerships with leading entities in academia and industry to leverage its foundation and task models for the development of proteins. In December 2023, BioMap collaborated with 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/24971">
 GeneQuantum Healthcare
 </a>
 to co-develop targeted Antibody-Drug Conjugate (ADC) therapeutics. The company also entered a partnership worth USD 1 billion with 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/22592">
 Sanofi
 </a>
 in October 2023 to co-develop AI modules for biotherapeutic drug discovery.&nbsp;
 
 
 
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 
 
 In August 2021, the company secured USD 100 million in a 
 <a href="https://www.caixinglobal.com/2021-08-02/biological-computing-startup-biomap-raises-100-million-in-new-funding-101750036.html">
 Series A
 </a>
 funding round led by GGV Capital. The funds were earmarked to accelerate the R&amp;D of BioMap's biocomputing technology.
 
</div>

<div>
 
 HiberCell is a biotechnology company that develops novel therapies focused on oncology. It entered the AI drug discovery space when it acquired AI genomics analysis company Genuity Science (and its subsidiaries in Iceland and Ireland) in August 2021.&nbsp;
 
 
 Genuity Science&rsquo;s solutions include end-to-end therapeutic discovery and development services such as building custom disease datasets, discovering and prioritizing targets, identifying biomarkers, and optimizing clinical trials. Genuity Science leverages its AI-powered platform to manage, process, and analyze genomic data. HiberCell intends to use Genuity Science&rsquo;s AI/ML capabilities to advance its oncology pipeline of five programs, of which one has reached the Phase 2 clinical trial stage.
 
 
 As of March 2024, the company&rsquo;s pipeline included three drug candidates, namely: 1) HC-7366, targeting the general control nonderepressible 2 (GCN2) kinase as part of the integrated stress response (ISR) signaling pathway; 2) HC-5404, aimed at inhibiting the PKR-like endoplasmic reticulum kinase (PERK) involved in the unfolded protein response (UPR) signaling pathway; and 3) odetiglucan, a therapy targeting tumor-immune interactions within the tumor microenvironment​.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 In December 2023, HiberCell and Merck &amp; Co partnered to conduct a Phase Ib trial to evaluate the combination therapy of belzutifan and HC-7366 for treating clear cell renal cell carcinoma. Further, in January 2021, the company partnered with Biodesix to develop an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay as a companion diagnostic test.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://hibercell.com/news/hibercell-closes-67-4-million-series-b-financing-and-secures-30-million-debt-facility-from-hercules-capital/">
 May 2021
 </a>
 , HiberCell completed a Series B financing round, raising USD 67.4 million, and secured an additional USD 30 million in debt financing from Hercules Capital. The funds were expected to be used for clinical advancement of its novel therapeutic candidates. 
 
</div>

HiberCell

<div>
 
 Arbor Biotechnologies specializes in gene editing to develop novel therapeutics for a variety of indications, starting with liver-related diseases. It operates an AI-powered biodiscovery platform to discover novel CRISPR enzymes, which are sequences of repeating genetic code. To do this, its platform deploys computational search techniques, genome sequencing, gene synthesis, and high-throughput screening. This can eventually be turned into drugs or even applied to agriculture and other industrial uses. In 2018, the company announced the discovery of Cas13d, a new type of gene editing enzyme that helps to alter RNA to treat genetic diseases.&nbsp;
 
 
 As of February 2024, the company had five internal drug discovery programs, of which one was in the IND-enabling stage. It also has multiple collaborative programs under development focused on oncology and various other therapeutic areas.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has a long-standing partnership with Vertex Pharmaceuticals since
 <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190103005194/en/Vertex-and-Arbor-Biotechnologies-Establish-Collaboration-to-Discover-Novel-Proteins-to-Advance-Discovery-of-Gene-Editing-Therapies">
 January 2019
 </a>
 , which focused on developing gene-editing treatments for cystic fibrosis and four other diseases. The alliance was further extended in 
 <a href="https://www.biospace.com/article/vertex-and-arbor-strike-a-1-2-billion-deal-for-gene-editing-programs/">
 August 2021
 </a>
 and 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/15741">
 January 2023
 </a>
 .&nbsp;
 
 
 Other partnerships included a collaboration with 
 <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/arbor-biotechnologies-announces-collaboration-with-ginkgo-bioworks-to-advance-the-discovery-and-development-of-precision-gene-editors-302011991.html">
 Ginkgo Bioworks
 </a>
 (December 2023) to leverage Ginkgo's R&amp;D services to further optimize Arbor's novel precision editors, a non-exclusive licensing agreement with 
 <a href="https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/02/08/2380680/0/en/EdiGene-and-Arbor-Biotechnologies-Announce-Worldwide-Non-exclusive-License-Agreement-to-Advance-Ex-Vivo-Engineered-Cell-Therapy-Programs.html">
 EdiGene
 </a>
 (February 2022) to leverage Arbor&rsquo;s platform for ex vivo oncology therapies, a strategic research and non-exclusive licensing agreement with 
 <a href="https://investors.tcr2.com/news-releases/news-release-details/tcr2-therapeutics-and-arbor-biotechnologies-establish">
 TCR2 Therapeutics
 </a>
 (January 2022) to develop allogeneic TRuC T-cell therapies using Arbor&rsquo;s CRISPR technology, and a license agreement with 
 <a href="https://www.lonza.com/news/2020-12-23-14-00">
 Lonza
 </a>
 (December 2020) to use Arbor&rsquo;s gene-editing technology for Lonza&rsquo;s bioproduction products and services.
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In its latest Series B funding round in November 2021, which was led by Ally Bridge Group, TCG Crossover, and Temasek, Arbor Biotechnologies raised USD 215 million. The proceeds of the round were earmarked to fuel the company&rsquo;s clinical development pipeline.
 
</div>

Arbor Biotechnologies

Based in the UK, Arctoris provides an automated drug discovery platform, offering fully validated research and development (R&amp;D) processes under an Experiments-as-a-Service model. The company works with biotechnology companies, AI drug discovery companies, pharma and academic institutions enabling these institutions to run experiments in Arctoris’s platform and provides on-demand access to a broad scale of datasets for AI drug discovery companies to train their algorithms.

Arctoris

<div>
 
 Frontier Medicines leverages AI/ML technologies to develop treatments for cancer-causing proteins that are dismissed by traditional pharma companies as undruggable.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company has a proprietary chemoproteomic platform which entails an approach based on the interaction of small-molecule compounds and proteins to screen a large number of targets and combine them with a protein database that contains more than 150,000 novel binding pockets (hotspots). This enables it to access 90% of the human proteome that were not previously targeted due to lack of hotspots. The platform&rsquo;s AI/ML engine incorporates a library of diverse compounds, a hotspot map that serves as the starting point for understanding the druggability of a potential therapeutic target, and lead design and generation.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company focuses on oncology and immunology target and, as of February 2024, it had five wholly-owned therapeutic programs and three AbbVie-partnered programs in its pipeline. All programs were in their discovery stage, except the company&rsquo;s lead candidate, FMC-376 (activated and inactivated forms), focused on treating different cancer types, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), colorectal carcinoma (CRC), and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), which is in the IND-enabling stage.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company entered a USD 100 million partnership with 
 <a href="https://news.abbvie.com/2020-12-02-AbbVie-and-Frontier-Medicines-Establish-Global-Partnership-to-Discover-and-Develop-Novel-Therapies-and-E3-Degraders-Against-Difficult-to-Drug-Targets">
 AbbVie
 </a>
 In December 2020 to develop small-molecule therapeutics against hard-to-drug protein targets including around 600 E3 ligases (the enzymes that drive the ubiquitination and degradation of proteins.&nbsp;
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In July 2021, the company raised USD 88.5 million in a 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4347">
 Series B
 </a>
 funding round co-led by Woodline Partners LP and RA Capital Management, with equal participation from Deerfield Management Company. The proceeds were earmarked for advancing the company&rsquo;s drug pipeline and expanding operations in Boston, where its new facility was to complement the company&rsquo;s headquarters in California. 
 
</div>

Frontier Medicines

<div>
 
 Verge Genomics is a biotechnology company engaged in developing therapeutics for neurological diseases using human genomics and AI to accelerate drug discovery. The main target areas are Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Parkinson&rsquo;s Disease (PD), and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD).&nbsp;
 
 
 It has built a proprietary all-human platform (unlike standard clinical trials that rely on animal data), called CONVERGE, that uses data sets from brain tissue samples of deceased patients with ALS and PD. While most drugs target only one gene at a time, the company claims its technology can identify hundreds of genes that cause disease and develop drugs that target all the genes at the same time. The company uses AI technology to optimize the drug discovery process as a whole.
 
 
 As of March 2024, Verge had one drug candidate in the clinical stage (Phase I) and 10 drug candidates in the discovery stage.&nbsp;
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 The company has partnerships with various tissue banks (such as Harvard University and University of Miami Miller School of Medicine) and several educational institutes and foundations (such as Target ALS, Answer ALS) that enabled its drug discovery platform.&nbsp;
 
 
 In addition, the company&rsquo;s customers include several pharmaceutical companies, such as 1) 
 <a href="https://www.vergegenomics.com/news-blog/verge-genomics-announces-research-collaboration-with-the-sheffield-institute-for-translational-neuroscience">
 Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN)
 </a>
 to accelerate the validation of novel drug targets and screening of drug compounds for Parkinson's disease (February 2021), 2) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4146">
 Eli Lilly
 </a>
 to research and develop novel therapies to treat ALS (July 2021), 3) 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/21707">
 Alexion
 </a>
 to identify novel drug targets for rare neurodegenerative and neuromuscular diseases (September 2023), and 4) 
 <a href="https://www.vergegenomics.com/news-blog/verge-genomics-and-the-pritzker-neuropsychiatric-disorders-research-consortium-form-cutting-edge-schizophrenia-research-collaboration">
 Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Disorders Research Consortium
 </a>
 to analyze data from schizophrenic patient&rsquo;s brain tissue with Verge&rsquo;s technology (October 2023).
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In December 2021, Verge raised USD 98 million in an oversubscribed 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7426">
 Series A
 </a>
 funding round led by BlackRock. The funds were used to scale up its pre-clinical and clinical candidate programs in the pipeline and enhance its lead therapeutics through clinical testing. 
 
</div>

Verge Genomics

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies to design and run preclinical experiments.

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies providing their ML platform to other pharma companies to identify biomarkers (measurable biological signs used to determine disease progression) and predict drug response. 

SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies aggregating and analyzing biomedical data with the help of AI to generate insights across the drug development pipeline.

Biotechnology companies that have integrated AI as a core component of their in-house drug development process. They typically have a few in-house drug development programs, and also collaborate with pharma companies to develop certain drugs.

Companies leverage GenAI to support drug discovery through accelerated drug designing

Companies offer AI/ML-based SaaS products to accelerate the discovery and development of novel therapeutics

Offers AI/ML-based solutions to accelerate drug discovery and development

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) research company BioMap and drug developer GeneQuantum Healthcare have joined forces to co-develop targeted Antibody-Drug Conjugate (ADC) therapeutics. The companies will combine GeneQuantum's proprietary enzymatic site-specific conjugation technology platforms with BioMap's large AI model and protein generation platform to create new ADC therapies. The collaboration seeks to address global unmet clinical needs with ADC drugs through the use of high-quality data mining and utilization, cross-model data integration and analysis, and antibody design.
</div>

BioMap

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