One signal

Anew Labs, a Shanghai-based ByteDance spinoff using artificial intelligence for drug discovery, has raised $290m from investors including HSG and IDG Capital, Reuters reports.

Why it matters

The fundraising followed the unit’s spin-off and valued Anew Labs at $1.5bn, according to the Reuters-sourced report carried by Techmeme. That gives readers a concrete signal of where investors see the next serious AI opportunity: not only chatbots and coding assistants, but the long, expensive business of finding medicines. The available report does not provide details on Anew Labs’ pipeline, research results or how the money will be spent. For now, the noteworthy development is the scale of the funding and ByteDance connection. AI drug discovery has attracted plenty of grand promises, but $290m is a rather less theoretical vote of confidence.

Discuss: Should AI drug-discovery companies have to publish meaningful evidence of scientific progress before raising hundreds of millions, or is early capital necessarily a bet on work that has not yet matured?

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