Inside Isomorphic Labs: Google DeepMind’s AI Life Sciences Spinoff Redefines Drug Discovery
April 9, 2025 – London, UK – In a sleek office bathed by a rare sunny day in London, Isomorphic Labs, the enigmatic AI life sciences spinoff from Google DeepMind, is quietly revolutionizing the future of medicine. Born from one of the most significant biological breakthroughs in decades, this Alphabet-backed venture is leveraging artificial intelligence to tackle humanity’s toughest health challenges, with a bold mission to “solve all disease.” Today, as it opens its AlphaFold 3 model to the scientific community for non-commercial use, Isomorphic Labs offers a glimpse into its ambitious journey.
Founded in 2021 by DeepMind co-founder and CEO Sir Demis Hassabis, Isomorphic Labs emerged from the triumph of AlphaFold 2, an AI system that cracked the 50-year-old puzzle of protein structure prediction, earning Hassabis and DeepMind’s John Jumper a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024. While DeepMind continues to push the boundaries of general AI, Isomorphic zeroes in on life sciences, harnessing AlphaFold’s successors to accelerate drug discovery. “When AlphaFold came along, we thought, ‘What could we do with this?’” said Colin Murdoch, Isomorphic’s president and former DeepMind chief business officer, in a recent CNBC interview. The answer: reimagine how drugs are designed, from the ground up.
At its core, Isomorphic Labs blends cutting-edge AI with biology, betting that machine learning can decode the complex interplay of life’s molecules—proteins, DNA, RNA, and beyond—faster than traditional methods. AlphaFold 3, unveiled in May 2024 alongside DeepMind, exemplifies this vision. Unlike its predecessors, it predicts not just protein structures but also how they interact with DNA, RNA, and small molecules critical to drug design, boasting accuracy rates that dwarf previous tools (e.g., 76% for protein-small molecule interactions versus 52% for the next best system). Available now via the AlphaFold Server, this tool is already fueling Isomorphic’s internal projects and partnerships with pharmaceutical giants like Eli Lilly and Novartis, deals potentially worth nearly $3 billion.
The company’s ascent has been meteoric. From a modest start with Google’s undisclosed seed investment in 2021, Isomorphic recently secured $600 million in its first external funding round, led by Thrive Capital with backing from GV and Alphabet, announced on March 31, 2025. The cash infusion will expand its team—now over 200 strong—and boost computational power to push into biologics and clinical trials, with Hassabis hinting at AI-designed drugs hitting trials by year’s end. “Improving human health is the most important thing we can do with AI,” Hassabis posted on X, a sentiment echoed by his dual role steering both Isomorphic and DeepMind.
Inside its London HQ (and a second office in Lausanne, Switzerland), Isomorphic buzzes with interdisciplinary talent—machine learning experts, medicinal chemists, and biologists united by a belief in AI’s transformative potential. The company’s platform, built on Google Cloud’s infrastructure, sifts through vast chemical and biological data to pinpoint promising drug candidates, slashing the typical five-year discovery phase. Partnerships with Lilly and Novartis, inked in January 2024, are already testing this promise, though specifics remain under wraps.
Yet, Isomorphic’s journey isn’t without scrutiny. Its 2023 financials showed a £60 million loss against minimal revenue, reflecting heavy R&D investment (£49 million), a gamble typical of biotech startups. Critics question whether AI can truly overhaul a process still reliant on lengthy clinical trials, but proponents like Thrive’s Vince Hankes call Hassabis “an extraordinarily special entrepreneur,” citing his chess-prodigy-to-Nobel-laureate pedigree. As the $71 billion drug discovery market braces for AI disruption, Isomorphic Labs stands at the vanguard—secretive no more, and poised to redefine medicine one molecule at a time.
By [Your Name], Technology and Science Editor
