Ex­sci­en­tia spends Soft­Bank's cash in bid to edge out AI ri­vals

Ex­sci­en­tia is sprint­ing to win the great AI biotech race.

The UK com­pa­ny, hav­ing long la­bored on small dis­cov­ery deals with large phar­mas, raised up to $525 mil­lion in a Se­ries D led by the in­fa­mous Japan­ese con­glom­er­ate Soft­Bank in April and fol­lowed it up less than a month lat­er with a Bris­tol My­ers Squibb deal that paid $50 mil­lion cash and $1.2 bil­lion in mile­stones.

Now, the Ox­ford spin­out is splurg­ing on a shiny new tool. On Mon­day they an­nounced they pur­chased the three-year-old mol­e­cule-screen­ing biotech All­cyte, a long­time col­lab­o­ra­tor, for $60.6 mil­lion in cash and stock.

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