Recursion's artificial intelligence drug discovery algorithms will be trained faster thanks to a $50 million investment from chip designer Nvidia, the firms announced on Wednesday, driving the biotech company's shares up over 83% in response. Recursion will leverage its biological and chemical datasets totaling more than 23,000 terabytes, which are advised by AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, to train AI models on Nvidia's cloud platform.
Through BioNeMo, a generative AI cloud service for drug development that Nvidia launched earlier this year, which is widely seen as one of the main winners of the artificial intelligence boom, biotech companies may then license those models from Nvidia. Over 7.7 million shares of the company's Class A common stock, or nearly 4% of it, were sold to Nvidia.
The biopharmaceutical business administers the Recursion OS platform, which provides drugmakers with access to datasets needed for creating and developing medications. Recursion increased its AI focus in May by purchasing two businesses involved in AI-driven medication development for $87.5 million. This investment comes at the same time.
Nvidia's software will be used by Recursion to support both its own and its partners' pipelines. Bayer and Roche are two of the company's existing partners. It is situated in Salt Lake City, Utah. Five of Recursion's medications are undergoing human trials, including one that is in the middle of testing to treat a specific type of neurovascular disease brought on by the abnormality of tiny blood veins in the brain.
Other notable sponsors of the biotech include UK-based investment company Baillie Gifford & Co. and sovereign investor Mubadala of Abu Dhabi. The price of Recursion's shares increased to $12.40 on high volume. If present gains continue throughout the day, they would have their greatest day since going public in 2021.