Vertex Ventures is a global network of operator-investors who manage portfolios in the U.S., China, Israel, India and Southeast Asia. The firm is a trusted partner to some of the world’s most innovative entrepreneurs, supporting them with unmatched operating experience and deep access to the capital, talent, partners and customers they need to build truly global businesses.

Vertex Ventures

Temasek Holdings is a lender provider. The company offers debt financing and focuses on transforming economies, increasing middle-income populations, developing comparative advantages, and emerging champions. Financial services, transportation, industrial, consumer, real estate, telecommunications, media, technology, and life sciences are among the industries served by the firm.

Temasek Holdings

Accel-X Pte Ltd, is a venture capital fund that invests in early stage technology companies that are highly scalable. Led by Mr Edmund Yong, a successful investor and entrepreneur who brings to the table more than 20 years of operational experience.    The fund helps technology startups to develop go-to-market strategies, build teams, scale as well as position themselves for follow-on funding and IPO.

Accel X

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India invests in high-growth start-ups seeking their first round of institutional venture capital funding across Asia (excluding China), with a focus on Singapore, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and other emerging hubs of innovation in this region. Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India collaborates with a network of venture funds across US, China and Israel, under the auspices of Vertex Holdings, providing local knowledge with global perspective.

Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India

Summit Partners is an investment firm that is currently investing in to growth equity, fixed income, and public equity opportunities. Summit has invested in more than 460 companies in technology, healthcare, life sciences, and other growth industries. Summit Partners enhances the value of these companies through infrastructure development, executive and board recruiting, and strategic and operational advice. The firm also brings extensive experience in helping companies navigate the complex process of public offerings or strategic sales and mergers.

Summit Partners

Global Brain Corporation is a venture capital firm that invests in companies from seed or early to pre-IPO startups.  Global Brain has invested in 300+ startups from seed/early to pre-IPO startups and achieved 25 IPOs and 61 M&As as a result of providing hands-on support services and resources to its portfolio startups. Global Brain has managed a pure investment fund as well as multiple corporate venture capital funds partnered together with tier 1 public companies of telecom, real estate development, financial service, beverages, agriculture food, logistics, and electronic devices.

Global Brain Corporation

Shunwei Capital is a venture capital fund that focuses on early to mid-stage investments in local internet industry. It specializes in incubation, startups, early to mid-stage, and growth capital investments. It seeks to invest in the technology, media, telecommunications, high technology, new media, games, internet finance, and rural area internet sectors. Their investors include sovereign wealth funds, fund of funds, university endowment funds, and family offices. Shunwei Capital is a China-based company that was founded in 2011 by Tuck Lye Koh and Lei Jun.

Shunwei Capital

HongShan is a VC firm focused on seed-stage, mid-stage, late-stage, and growth investments in the fintech sector. HongShan has offices in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Shenzhen. Over the past nine years, Sequoia Capital China has an impressive and diverse portfolio comprising about 300 dynamic companies that deliver high returns on investment using differentiated technologies and innovative business models, including Alibaba, VIPshop.com, Sina.com, Didi, JD.com, Ourpalm, Qihoo 360, Jumei, Momo, SINNET, Dianping.com, Meituan, Meilishuo, Toutiao, AutoNavi, Ganji.com, DJI, VanceInfo, Noah Private Wealth Management, Wanda Cinemas, Alibaba Pictures, Plateno Hotels Group, Deppon Logistics, ZTO Express, Beta Pharma, Snibe Diagnostic, BGI, WEGO, and Yuwell Medical.

HongShan

Qualgro is a Venture Capital firm based in Singapore, investing in tech companies in Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Software to support talented entrepreneurs with regional or global growth ambition. Qualgro invests across Southeast Asia, primarily at Series A & B.

Qualgro VC

Tencent is an internet service portal offering value-added internet, mobile, telecom, and online advertising services. Its communications and social platforms Weixin and QQ connect users with each other, with digital content and daily life services in just a few clicks.  Tencent has maintained steady growth under its user-oriented operating strategies. It provides value-added internet, mobile, and telecom services, as well as online advertising under the strategic goal of providing users with ''one-stop online lifestyle services.'' Tencent’s Internet platforms in China – QQ (QQ Instant Messenger), WeChat, QQ.com, QQ Games, Qzone, 3g.QQ.com, SoSo, PaiPai, and Tenpay – aim to address the various needs of internet users, including communication, information, entertainment, e-commerce, and others. In September 2013, Tencent's market valuation rose to $101 billion, and as of November 21, 2013, QQ had 2 billion active users and WeChat had 650 million monthly active users. The numbers of active users for QQ mail, Qzone, Tencent Weibo, and QQ news were 274 million, 626 million, 220 million, and 150 million, respectively. Tencent was founded in November of 1998. In April 2000, the IDG and PCCW invested a total of $2.2 million dollars in the company. Tencent was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (SEHK) on June 16, 2004. Baidu, Alibaba, and Netease are Tencent's major competitors.

Tencent

SoftBank Vision Fund is a subsidiary of Softbank Group that specializes in growth capital and social impact investments. Sectors that the fund invests in include the internet of things, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, communications infrastructure, telecoms, computational biology, biotech, cloud technologies and software, consumer internet businesses, financial technology, and mobile apps. The Fund is designed to be a catalyst for technology progress in anticipation that it will expand SoftBank's capabilities, accelerating progress towards SoftBank 2.0. It aims to invest in businesses and foundational platforms that SoftBank believes to revolutionize and innovate the world tomorrow.

SoftBank Vision Fund

CITIC Industrial Investment Group

Jiantou Huawen Investment is an investment Firm.

Jiantou Huawen Investment

China Jianyin Investment (JIC) is an integrated investment group focused on equity investments. Their mission is to promote technological progress and industrial upgrading, strengthen the culture of the country, strengthen consumption and services, and improve livelihoods. They are committed to creating long-term, stable and sustainable returns on capital investment for their shareholders. As a State-owned enterprise (SOE), They are also committed to fulfilling social responsibilities. They have a profound grasp of the momentum of China economic growth transition, and have actively expanded their presence overseas to compete in the global market. They have focused their attention on the financial services, industrial manufacturing, culture and consumption , information technology and other sectors.

China Jianyin Investment

PatSnap

PatSnap is a connected innovation intelligence platform that provides IP and R&D intelligence. It is used by more than 10,000 customers in over 50 countries around the world to access market, technology, and competitive intelligence as well as patent insights needed to take products from ideation to commercialization.  The company was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Singapore.

<div>Patsnap is an intellectual property analytics company. It operates a software platform that uses AI technology to combine millions of data points from patents, licensing, litigation, and other sources to provide intelligence that helps companies streamline research and development (R&amp;D) departments.&nbsp;</div>

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

AI Drug Discovery

Singapore unicorn Patsnap to expand AI-powered patent search

<div>
 
 Patsnap is an intellectual property analytics company. It operates a software platform that uses AI technology to combine millions of data points from patents, licensing, litigation, and other sources to provide intelligence that helps companies streamline research and development (R&amp;D) departments.&nbsp;
 
 
 Its main solutions include IP Intelligence (to track patent filings in the market, including competitors), R&amp;D intelligence (tracking all sorts of R&amp;D-related data points such as market reports, government grants, and clinical trials to provide R&amp;D insights), Life Science (sequence-searching platform), and Chemical (validate chemical development projects by analyzing big data). The life science-focused solution, PatSnap Bio, allows pharma companies to search for protein, DNA, and RNA sequences within patent and non-patent sources in order to improve their R&amp;D process.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of March 2024, PatSnap has more than 12,000 customers across 50 countries. It has partnered with Chemical Abstracts Service, a division of the American Chemical Society, to receive wide coverage of manually curated patents and non-patent sequences from proprietary sources (March 2020).
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/1090">
 March 2021
 </a>
 , PatSnap raised USD 300 million in a Series E funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Tencent Investment. The proceeds were aimed to further develop the company&rsquo;s intelligence platform, accelerate software product development, and expand the global sales team. 
 
</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 for drug discovery services such as target selection, validation and lead optimization.

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.

Includes companies that use GenAI as a core part of their product offering for drug discovery & development

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>
 
 Patsnap, an AI patent intelligence platform based in Singapore and the UK, has launched an innovative AI assistant, Hiro Life Sciences (Hiro LS). This tool is designed to improve biopharmaceutical research and speed up the development of key medical treatments.
 The innovative assistant, powered by Patsnap’s own PharmaGPT, fuses advanced AI technology with industry-specific insight, aiding biopharma teams in managing, scrutinising, and utilising biomedical data in real-time. Moreover, it offers users real-time insights, effortless integration with in-house systems, and secure exchanges that safeguard personal data privacy. Patsnap anticipates that the new product will facilitate quicker decision-making, thereby reducing the time taken to bring vital therapies to market.
 
</div>

PatSnap

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