Eight Roads Ventures China and Sequoia Capital China co-led the investment, with participation from Quan Capital and existing shareholder MSA Capital.

The company will use the fund to further enhance its AI platform, expand its team by attracting top-notch talents, and strengthen external collaborations with biopharma companies.

Founded in 2018 by Professor Zeng Jianyang from Tsinghua University, Silexon facilitates drug discovery and development with its sophisticated deep learning modules & algorithms. It has developed its proprietary technology AI4D™ and AI4Pat™ platforms to empower first-in-class and best-in-class novel drugs discovery and development.

To date, Silexon has established strategic collaboration with two leading CROs, Bioduro and Viva, and is expanding its partnership with other CROs and biopharma companies.

Xin Liu, Partner at Eight Roads, said “Silexon has built a well-balanced team consisting of AI scientists with interdisciplinary capability covering computer science, biology and chemistry, as well as industry veterans in drug discovery at the company’s wet lab. Professor Zeng is recognized as a world leading computational biology/AI drug discovery key opinion leader with 15 years of research experience in machine learning and big data. We are honored to partner with Silexon and support the company’s further growth with our global resources and expertise.”

In 2019, China Ventures team invested in the Series B funding round of Insilico Medicine, an AI-based platform for drug development and discovery. Eight Roads continued to participate in Insilico’s $255m Series C funding round in June 2021.