Aqemia, a French startup that’s meshing “quantum-inspired physics” with machine learning to find new drugs, has raised $38 million in a fresh round of funding led by San Francisco-based VC firm Cathay Innovation. This is Aqemia’s second fundraise of the year — it announced a €30 million ($31.5 million) raise back in January — and it takes the company’s total funding raised past the $100 million mark. Founded in Paris by Maximilien Levesque and Emmanuelle Rolland-Martiano (pictured above) in 2019, Aqemia is one of countless startups applying AI to drug discovery. In 2024 alone, we’ve seen the likes of Healx raise $47 million to tackle rare diseases; Sam Altman-backed Formation Bio raise $372 million; and Xaira emerge from stealth with a whopping $1 billion in funding. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Director John Jumper, meanwhile, shared one-half of the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on Alphafold, an AI system that accurately predicts protein structures — vital for drug discovery.

Full report : Paris-based Aqemia, which aims to scale drug discovery using quantum algorithms and AI, raised $3 million led by Cathay Innovation, after raising €30 million in January 2024.