A chemistry start-up residing in Midtown Manhattan, an area otherwise known for corporate offices, luxury brand stores, and pricey apartments, has secured $95 million in series A financing to use artificial intelligence to discover new drugs. Excelsior Sciences received $70 million from investors, including Deerfield Management, Khosla Ventures, and Sofinnova Partners, and a $25 million grant from New York’s Empire State Development. The company aims to discover small-molecule drugs using chemistry that laboratory robots, rather than human chemists, can perform. “This is chemistry which machines can do and AI can use. It’s like creating a new chemical language that machines can understand,” says Michael Foley, cofounder and CEO of Excelsior. “It is the opposite of what everyone on Earth is doing, which is developing machines to do chemistry.”

Full report : Excelsior Sciences, which aims to use AI and robots for small-molecule drug discovery and development, raised a $70 million Series A from Khosla Ventures and others.