METis Pharmaceuticals Completes Angel Round Financing of Multi-Million Dollars

According to 36Kr.com, Hangzhou Jitai Pharmaceutical Technology Co., Ltd. ("METis Pharmaceuticals") has announced it has completed the angel round financing of multi-million US dollars, led by FREES FUND, with the participation from Source Code Capital and XtalPi. Huaxing Alpha acted as the exclusive financial adviser in the latest round.

Proceeds of this round will be used to build an AI preparation optimization platform in China and the United States, and cooperate with domestic and foreign pharmaceutical enterprises to develop new drugs and preparations.

Founded in 2018 and incubated by XtalPi in Boston, METiS Pharmaceuticals is a cross-u.s. It is the first start-up company in the world to drive the development of pharmaceutical preparations by artificial intelligence (AI). The company is committed to the rapid and accurate development of intelligent pharmaceutical preparations by combining the breakthrough high-throughput pharmaceutical experiment platform and cutting-edge computing physics, AI and cloud computing technologies. 

Currently, 90% of new drug molecules in preclinical stage are facing a problem of extremely poor bioavailability, which leads to the failure of more than 30% development of new drugs of small molecules. To solve this, METiS Pharmaceuticals uses the AI-driven platform across different preparation modules to optimize drug design and significantly improve drug properties.

At present, METiS Pharmaceuticals focuses on two sectors, how to assist pharmaceutical enterprises in the optimization of preclinical preparations, and the development of low-risk, low-cost, short-development-cycle, but high-quality drugs. METiS Pharmaceuticals is currently developing new drugs for diseases such as lung cancer and hepatitis B, which are expected to enter the clinic within one or two years.

FREES FUND is a venture capital firm investing in great startups and helping them grow into great enterprises that are valuable to society. The company mainly invests in early-stage startups and hopes to become their first-round institutional investor. Its primary interested areas are broad-sense TMT (Technology, Media, Telecom), B2B and deep technology.

Founded in 2014, Source Code Capital is a leading China VC. With $1.5 billion and RMB 3.5 billion under management, Source Code is focused on the "Big 3" fundamental drivers, which are Internet+, AI+, and Global+, and invests along sectors such as media and entertainment, consumer services, enterprise, finance, retail, transportation, housing, education, and healthcare.