Insilico Medicine, a Hong Kong and New York-based firm that makes use of AI for drug discovery, has filed for an preliminary public providing within the Asian monetary hub that’s slowly recovering from a drought of main listings.
Insilico Drugs didn’t disclose particulars of its IPO in its submitting to the Hong Kong inventory change on Tuesday, though a report by native newspaper South China Morning Put up stated it’s planning to lift $200 million, citing unnamed sources. The corporate had beforehand filed confidentially for a U.S. IPO to lift round $300 million, Bloomberg Information reported in November 2021. Insilico Drugs didn’t instantly reply to a remark request.
The biotech firm was valued at roughly $895 million after elevating $95 million final July from the likes of main Chinese language healthcare-focused agency Qiming Enterprise Companions and Singapore-based billionaire Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital. Different buyers within the spherical embrace U.S. non-public fairness large Warburg Pincus, in addition to the enterprise capital arm of oil large Saudi Aramco and Pavilion Capital, a unit of Singapore state-owned funding fund Temasek.
Earlier buyers within the firm embrace Chinese language pharma billionaire Li Ge’s WuXi, Sequoia Capital China, Hillhouse, Baidu Ventures and Lilly Asia Ventures, the enterprise capital agency spun off from Eli Lilly & Co.
Insilico Drugs says it makes use of generative AI know-how to hurry up and scale back the price of discovering novel medication that focus on primarily uncommon illnesses. The corporate is at present specializing in a drug candidate that would deal with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a uncommon lung illness. It’s additionally engaged on dozens of different potential medicines for Covid-19 and most cancers, amongst others.
Insilico Drugs noticed its income leap greater than six instances to $30.1 million in 2022 from the earlier yr, in response to the submitting. The corporate generates income from analysis and growth collaborations with pharmaceutical corporations and subscription charges for its generative AI platforms. Among the pharma corporations Insilico Drugs has teamed up with embrace Chinese language billionaire Guangchang Guo’s Fosun Worldwide and U.S. behemoth Pfizer. Insilicon reported its web loss widened to $221 million final yr from $130.5 million the yr earlier than.
Insilico Drugs’s itemizing software comes as Hong Kong is slowly recovering from a fall-off in IPOs. The Asian monetary middle has struggled to reclaim its crown because the world’s largest IPO venue since 2020 amid strict Covid restrictions and Beijing’s crackdown on the non-public sector.
However analysts lately stated Hong Kong might regain its momentum within the second half of 2023 following border reopenings and the town’s introduction of latest itemizing guidelines to draw pre-revenue tech corporations. PwC estimated that Hong Kong will see round 100 new listings elevating a complete of as much as HK$170 billion ($21.7 billion) in 2023. In the meantime, Deloitte stated the town might report 110 new listings elevating about HK$230 billion this yr.
Among the many corporations that has lately filed for an IPO is Lalatech, the Hong Kong-based logistics and supply large managed by Chow Shing Yuk, a uncommon startup billionaire within the metropolis. Others embrace Chinese language biotech corporations, corresponding to Adicon Scientific Laboratories, a laboratory chain backed by U.S. non-public fairness large Carlyle Group.
Insilico Drugs was based in 2014 within the U.S. by Alex Zhavoronkov, a Canadian-Latvian scientist who graduated from the Johns Hopkins College with a grasp’s diploma in biotechnology. The corporate arrange its headquarters in Hong Kong in 2019, and now operates a robotics lab in Suzhou, together with places of work in Abu Dhabi, Montreal, Shanghai and Taipei.
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