Chemistry AI startup ChemLex raises US$45 million, sets up global HQ in Singapore

[SINGAPORE] ChemLex has raised a US$45 million funding round led by Granite Asia and established its global headquarters in Singapore.

The startup develops technologies to accelerate chemical discovery for the pharmaceutical industry. ChemLex’s platform is a 24/7 autonomous chemistry system that can run experiments and capture data in real time.

The data collected through the platform in one day is equivalent to that from three years of running experiments the manual way. This transforms discovery into a smoother workflow rather than a stop-start process.

“Singapore strengthens this effort and provides us an ecosystem to scale rapidly and support partners globally who need this capability now,” said Sean Lin, founder and chief executive officer of ChemLex.

The chemistry artificial intelligence (AI) company has supported more than 70 customers globally since its inception in 2022, including six of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies in the world. ChemLex aims to tap the AI-powered drug discovery market, which is forecast to grow from US$3.6 billion in 2024 to about US$50 billion in 2034.

The funding will be used to hire more hardware and software engineers as well as chemists in Singapore. This will enable ChemLex to serve a broader range of pharmaceutical and material science projects.

“This is the type of deep-tech company that can reshape supply chains, shorten development timelines and unlock new economic value; and Singapore gives them the foundation to grow,” said Kuang Yinghui, partner at Granite Asia.

ChemLex is gearing up to duplicate the fully automated lab it has in Shanghai, in Singapore. The company’s AI powers the robot arms that carry out the manual labour in chemistry labs, from mixing reagents and checking for the chemical reactions to piping the samples.

Lin makes it clear that the AI is not trained on customer data, having burned capital to train ChemLex’s AI on the company’s own dime and experiments.

SEE ALSO

“There’s a clear firewall between different customers because (intellectual property) is everything,” he said.

The AI not only carries out the experiments, but also helps find the most optimal way to make the target molecules that customers are looking for through reaction screening.

Separately, ChemLex also inked a memorandum of understanding with the Experimental Drug Development Centre (EDDC), Singapore’s national platform for drug discovery and development. The collaboration seeks to accelerate small-molecule drug discovery – low molecular weight compounds – through advanced automation.

“This partnership reinforces our shared vision of accelerating drug discovery and development through cutting-edge technology, ultimately bringing safer, more effective therapies to patients faster,” said Professor Damian O’Connell, CEO of EDDC.