Isomorphic Labs Limited[1] is a British multinational artificial intelligence company based in London, United Kingdom.[2] Isomorphic Labs was founded by Demis Hassabis, who is the CEO.[3] The company was incorporated on February 24, 2021[1] and announced on November 4, 2021.[4] It was established under Alphabet Inc. as a spin-off from its AI research lab DeepMind, of which Hassabis is also founder and CEO.[5][6][7]
The company draws upon DeepMind's AlphaFold technology, which can be used to predict protein structures in the human body with high accuracy, allowing its researchers to find new target pathways for drug delivery.[7][8]
History
In December 2022, Isomorphic Labs announced its second office location in Lausanne, Switzerland.[7][9]
In January 2024, Isomorphic Labs partnered with Novartis AG and Eli Lilly and Company to work together on AI drug discovery and research.[10]
In May 2024, Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs announced the release of AlphaFold 3, an artificial intelligence and foundation model platform. Available for free on the AlphaFold server for non-commercial research, the platform was developed by training it with nearly 100,000 known proteins.[11] AlphaFold 3 can predict how proteins fold and the interactions with molecules typically found in drugs such as ligands or antibodies, which is expected to significantly accelerate drug discovery.[12]
In November 2024, preliminary results of CASP16 showed AlphaFold 3-based models did not significantly outperform older methods for predicting protein-ligand interactions. The top performing models in the CASP16 Pose Prediction for Pharma Targets section were ClusPro[13] and CoDock[14] utilizing AlphaFold 2 based predictions, human visual inspection, and manual adjustments.[15]
In April 2025 Isomorphic Labs raised $600 Million in its first ever external funding round, led by Thrive Capital.[16][17]
In February 2026, the company announced its Drug Design Engine, which doubled the performance of AlphaFold 3 on a protein-ligand structure prediction generalization benchmark, predicts small molecule binding-affinities with higher accuracy than physics-based methods at a small fraction of the time and cost, and identified new binding pockets on target proteins using only the amino acid sequence.[18]
External links
References
- ISOMORPHIC LABS LIMITED overview - Find and update company information - GOV.UK Companies House, 2021-02-24, retrieved 2023-08-20^
- Ry Crist. Alphabet launches Isomorphic Labs, an AI-driven drug discovery startup CNET, 2021-11-04^
- Sam Shead. Google-parent Alphabet has set up a new lab that will use A.I. to try to discover new drugs CNBC, 2021-11-05, retrieved 2023-11-30^
- Nicole Wetsman. Alphabet is launching a company that uses AI for drug discovery The Verge, 4 November 2021, retrieved 22 September 2024^
- Sam Shead. Google-parent Alphabet has set up a new lab that will use A.I. to try to discover new drugs CNBC, November 5, 2021, retrieved November 9, 2021^
- Devin Coldewey. Isomorphic Labs is Alphabet's play in AI drug discovery TechCrunch, 2021-11-04, retrieved 2022-08-23^
- Cristina Criddle, Ian Johnston. DeepMind spin-off steps up effort to use AI to create new drugs Financial Times, 2022-12-03, retrieved 2023-04-28^
- Katyanna Quach. Alphabet launches new AI drug discovery startup, Isomorphic Labs, led by DeepMind CEO The Register, 2021-11-08, retrieved 2023-04-28^
- Aaron Hurst. DeepMind spin-off Isomorphic Labs announces drug discovery scale plans Information Age, December 5, 2022^
- Samantha Barton. Alphabet's Isomorphic Labs to collaborate with Novartis, Lilly on AI-driven drug discovery Fortune, 8 January 2024^
- Dr. Sai Balasubramanian. Google DeepMind And Isomorphic Labs Are Making Rapid Progress In Biology And Drug Discovery Forbes, September 10, 2024^
- James Thomason. Google's AlphaFold 3 AI predicts the very building blocks of life VentureBeat, 2024-05-08, retrieved 2024-05-09^
- S. R. Comeau, D. W. Gatchell, S. Vajda, C. J. Camacho. ClusPro: a fully automated algorithm for protein-protein docking Nucleic Acids Research, 2004-07-01^
- Ren Kong, Ran-Ran Liu, Xi-Ming Xu, Da-Wei Zhang, Xiao-Shuang Xu, Hang Shi, Shan Chang. Template-based modeling and ab-initio docking using CoDock in CAPRI Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics, 2020^
- Groups Analysis: Ligand predictions - CASP16 predictioncenter.org, retrieved 2024-12-03^
- Google-backed AI drug discovery startup raises $600 million The Hindu, 2025-04-01, retrieved 2025-04-01^
- Michael J. de la Merced. Isomorphic Labs, Google’s A.I. Drug Business, Raises Money From Thrive The New York Times, 2025-03-31, retrieved 2025-04-01^
- The Isomorphic Labs Drug Design Engine unlocks a new frontier beyond AlphaFold www.isomorphiclabs.com, February 10, 2026, retrieved 2026-02-16^