HERAN leads €6 million growth round to accelerate US expansion of Pharmacelera

Pharmacelera raises €6M to expand in U.S. and build out its high speed, high accuracy, deep tech drug discovery platform

• The investment round was led by investment fund manager Heran Partners, with participation from Clave Capital, Inveready, and Bio&Tech Smart Capital.
• Financing will enable Pharmacelera to build ongoing relationships with major pharm and biotech customers in the US.
• Pharmacelera’s Quantum-Mechanics and Artificial Intelligence proprietary platform accurately scours the vast chemical known as “exaSpace” to identify novel molecules more precisely, efficiently and faster than traditional AI-led methods.

Utilizing its proprietary Quantum Mechanics and Artificial Intelligence (“QaiM”) algorithms, Pharmacelera is revolutionizing drug discovery by finding novel and diverse molecular candidates across the vast chemical “exaSpace” with unprecedented speed, efficiency and accuracy. It can generate molecules that are up to 10 times better, 75,000 times faster, than traditional AI-led drug discovery approaches. Its technology can be applied to small molecules and small peptides in all stages of drug discovery – from hit identification, through hit-to-lead, to lead optimization.

This investment round will help Pharmacelera grow further and faster – firstly, by establishing a permanent team in the U.S., and secondly, by enabling the Company to expand the technical capabilities of its unique QaiM drug discovery engine in key growth areas.

The round was led by Heran Partners, a leading life sciences investor, and joined by Clave Capital, a long-standing tech transfer investor; Inveready, a Spanish alternative asset manager with a dedicated Life Sciences strategy; and Bio&Tech Smart Capital, a specialist investor in healthtech and science-based innovation.

Pharmacelera, accelerated by The Collider program from Barcelona Mobile Worls Capital, has already participated in more than 100 projects to date, including several notable successes in GPCRs. It has won repeat business from customers in both Europe and the US, including three big pharma companies and numerous highly regarded biotech companies.

The first wave of AI-powered drug discovery promised a lot but delivered comparatively little. Pharmacelera is changing the picture, by coupling AI with quantum-based simulations to leverage the exaSpace – the vast, undiscovered universe of trillions of molecules – to find highly novel drug candidates that are up to 10 times better, using a process that’s up to 75,000 times faster than traditional AI-led approaches.

Enric Gibert, CEO Pharmacelera

The backing of these leading investors, who have a deep understanding of drug discovery, is a strong validation of our revolutionary technology. The funding will enable us to establish a team in the US – a natural next step to continue strengthening our relationships with large pharmaceutical and biotech companies on both the East and West coasts. It will also help us to greatly widen the capabilities of our QaiM engine.

Enric Gibert, CEO Pharmacelera

By combining physics-based algorithms with machine learning, Pharmacelera enables the design of molecular candidates for novel targets and modes of action with a higher probability of success. We have a high conviction in this company, which was reinforced through direct discussions with its customers, including leading pharmaceutical companies, who have already experienced the significant impact of its technology.

Raf Roelands, Partner at HERAN Partners 

The funding round follows the signing of a strategic alliance between Pharmacelera and Silicon Valley company igniter General Inception (GI) in 2023, in which Pharmacelera became GI’s AI drug discovery strategic partner. Venkat Reddy, GI’s Chief Scientific Officer, sits on Pharmacelera’s Board of Directors. Since then, Pharmacelera’s technology has strengthened the intellectual property of several of GI’s portfolio companies.