Sovereign AI puts cash and compute behind UK startup using AI to redefine chemistry
By Cabinet Office ·
- UK Government’s Sovereign AI backing Potential Sciences - a British startup whose new approach to using AI in science could make the design of new medicines faster, cheaper and more reliable than current methods
- Sovereign AI is the government’s big bet on promising AI companies to help them grow, scale and succeed from Britain, driving the modern reindustrialisation of Britain
- Package of support includes investment and compute as the company announces an eight-figure funding round today
Potential Sciences, a British startup aiming to unlock the next big advance in how we use AI to design new medicines, has secured backing from the UK Government’s Sovereign AI venture fund as part of an eight-figure fundraise announced today (Thursday 5 November).
The investment and access to compute - the processing power needed to run and train AI models - being made available reflects the UK’s ambition to back homegrown companies developing the critical technologies that will drive the modern reindustrialisation of Britain, and the next wave of AI innovation.
Using AI for the design of new chemicals - and discovering new medicines in particular - is opening up new possibilities for tackling diseases like cancer and Parkinson’s, which could offer hope to patients and families across the country. However progress has been held back because AI usually relies on data from slow, costly real world lab experiments.
Potential Sciences are taking a new approach, with an AI model focused on the fundamental laws of physics, rather than previous experimental data. This could make the AI calculations needed to design chemicals 100 times cheaper than at present - unlocking a wave of new discoveries in fields that are currently uneconomical to focus on.
Sovereign AI is the government’s big bet on promising early-stage AI companies to help them grow, scale and succeed from Britain, offering a range of backing to high-potential AI businesses that are starting out on British shores.
Combining the pace and ambition of venture capital with the weight of the state behind it, Sovereign AI is moving fast, backing ambition so that Britain’s AI innovators and entrepreneurs can go on to succeed globally.
AI Minister Kanishka Narayan said:
Potential Sciences is a startup that’s grasping an opportunity Britain is uniquely well-placed to capitalise on: using our deep expertise in data, fundamental science and computing to potentially unleash the next great wave of medical discovery. Solving chemistry’s ‘data bottleneck’ could allow researchers to explore new treatments for diseases that are currently deemed too rare or expensive to focus on. This is AI at its best – pushing the boundaries of innovation, ultimately to improve people’s lives.
Potential Sciences is a startup that’s grasping an opportunity Britain is uniquely well-placed to capitalise on: using our deep expertise in data, fundamental science and computing to potentially unleash the next great wave of medical discovery.
Solving chemistry’s ‘data bottleneck’ could allow researchers to explore new treatments for diseases that are currently deemed too rare or expensive to focus on. This is AI at its best – pushing the boundaries of innovation, ultimately to improve people’s lives.
Science Minister Chris McDonald said:
As a former chemical engineer, I know firsthand how the field can make a real difference; whether that’s discovering new medicines to treat and beat disease, or finding cheaper and more efficient ways to bring innovations to life. This investment plays into everything that’s good about British innovation, and shows what could be possible when we bring scientific research together with AI. Backing homegrown success stories like Potential Sciences, we’re giving companies the support they need to realise their ambitions, and backing science and innovation to deliver the medical breakthroughs that people all over the country will benefit from.
As a former chemical engineer, I know firsthand how the field can make a real difference; whether that’s discovering new medicines to treat and beat disease, or finding cheaper and more efficient ways to bring innovations to life.
This investment plays into everything that’s good about British innovation, and shows what could be possible when we bring scientific research together with AI. Backing homegrown success stories like Potential Sciences, we’re giving companies the support they need to realise their ambitions, and backing science and innovation to deliver the medical breakthroughs that people all over the country will benefit from.
Hatem Helal, founder and CEO of Potential Sciences, said
AI for drug discovery has learned almost everything the existing experimental record can teach it. The next leap needs new data, and the laws of physics can supply it, as long as your software can use modern hardware. We rebuilt quantum chemistry for GPUs so that gold-standard accuracy is affordable at the scale AI needs. When your code is 100 times more efficient, a seed round buys what used to take a dedicated datacenter.
AI for drug discovery has learned almost everything the existing experimental record can teach it. The next leap needs new data, and the laws of physics can supply it, as long as your software can use modern hardware.
We rebuilt quantum chemistry for GPUs so that gold-standard accuracy is affordable at the scale AI needs. When your code is 100 times more efficient, a seed round buys what used to take a dedicated datacenter.
Sovereign AI is backing Potential Sciences as an investor in today’s funding round. Other backers include Twin Path Ventures, Odyssey, Portfolio Ventures, Blue Wire Capital, rule30, Nauta Capital and Lightfield Equity, as well as angel investment from the likes of Patrick Collison (co-founder of Stripe) and Chris Gibson (co-founder and former CEO of Recursion). While AI engineer Andrew Fitzgibbon and entrepreneur James Hawkins will support the company as advisors.
Sovereign AI is also making compute available to the company through the AI Research Resource, the UK’s national suite of advanced supercomputers, including the Isambard-AI supercomputer in Bristol.
Chair of the Prime Minister’s AI Taskforce, Lord Vallance, said:
Drug discovery is an expensive and uncertain business and we still don’t have effective treatments and cures for many diseases. Potential Sciences has proposed an elegant solution: turning to the fundamentals of quantum science and AI. That could be a gamechanger and speaks to the ingenuity and inspiration that Sovereign AI seeks to foster into new businesses and products.
Drug discovery is an expensive and uncertain business and we still don’t have effective treatments and cures for many diseases. Potential Sciences has proposed an elegant solution: turning to the fundamentals of quantum science and AI. That could be a gamechanger and speaks to the ingenuity and inspiration that Sovereign AI seeks to foster into new businesses and products.
Sovereign AI Investment Partner Joséphine Kant said:
I first met Hatem in Cambridge, and he immediately struck me as a formidable founder. He combines technical excellence with low ego and unapologetic ambition. He knows the science in extraordinary detail, but he’s also deliberate about bringing in people who are exceptional in areas different from his own. Potential Sciences have the ambition to become a true frontier lab for chemistry, with the potential to fundamentally change how the field works.
I first met Hatem in Cambridge, and he immediately struck me as a formidable founder. He combines technical excellence with low ego and unapologetic ambition. He knows the science in extraordinary detail, but he’s also deliberate about bringing in people who are exceptional in areas different from his own.
Potential Sciences have the ambition to become a true frontier lab for chemistry, with the potential to fundamentally change how the field works.
This news comes a week after the Budget, where the Chancellor confirmed a further £140 million backing for Sovereign AI, with an additional £60 million to support the Fund’s investments, plus £80 million for Sovereign AI’s R&D Procurement Scheme. The Chancellor also announced that Sovereign AI would expand into a new focus area of Physical and Industrial AI, building on the UK’s leading research base and growing strengths in areas such as robotics, autonomous systems and advanced manufacturing.
All of the startups Sovereign AI supports have a meaningful presence here in the UK, and create well paid jobs right across the country - supporting the Government’s ambition for good growth in every postcode. These startups are all firmly anchored in the UK with either their founders, leadership, operating headquarters or a large proportion of their talent based here in Britain.
Notes to editors:
- The Fund will invest directly in promising UK AI companies to help them scale in the UK. Our investments will be focused on companies at the early and growth-stage.
- Typical equity investments will be worth around £1-10 million, though every company’s circumstances will be different.
- Like most venture capital funds we do not comment on specific investment figures as they are commercially sensitive.
ENDS
Originally published by GOV.UK News & Communications