Dundee spinout Exscientia is continuing a busy fundraising year with a filing for an IPO in the US and a $35m concurrent private placement.
Exscientia, a UK-based drug discovery technology spinout of University of Dundee, filed for an initial public offering in the US on Friday, using a customary $100m placeholder amount.
The spinout has not yet determined how many American Depositary Shares it will issue, or at what price, but has secured a commitment from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to raise $35m in a concurrent private placement.
Founded in 2012, Exscientia has created an artificial intelligence-based end-to-end target identification, drug design and patient selection platform. It has three assets in phase 1 trials – one developed internally and two in partnership with pharmaceutical firm Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma.
Proceeds from the offering and private placement will go towards further platform development, the completion of the phase 1 study for Exscientia’s internal candidate, and proof-of-concept studies.
The spinout will dedicate some $70m to its pandemic preparedness programme and will use the remaining cash for ongoing drug discovery programmes, general corporate purposes and strategic investments.
The spinout secured $225m in a series D round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, a vehicle for telecoms conglomerate SoftBank, in April 2021.
Pharmaceutical firms Novo and Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) also took part in the round, as did funds managed by BlackRock, GT Healthcare Capital, Marshall Wace, Pivotal BioVenture Partners, Laurion Capital, Hongkou and Abu Dhabi state-owned Mubadala Investment Company.
The round could swell to $525m thanks to an additional $300m commitment made by SoftBank that can be drawn at Exscientia’s discretion.
It followed a $100m series C round closed just one month earlier thanks to a $40m extension from BlackRock that added to a $60m initial tranche led by Novo in May 2020, when BMS, drug discovery firm Evotec and unnamed limited partners of GT Healthcare also invested.
GT Healthcare, Evotec and pharmaceutical firm Celgene (now a subsidiary of BMS) took part in a $26m series B round in 2019, two years after Evotec had injected $17.7m.
Commercialisation firm Frontier IP owns a 2.4% stake in the spinout, having helped establish Exscientia. Shareholders owning more than 5% include Evotec, SoftBank, Novo, Celgene, GT Healthcare and BlackRock.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities and Barclays Capital have been appointed as underwriters for the proposed offering, slated to take place on the Nasdaq Global Market.
