Eli Lilly and Co. and Purdue Ventures recently participated in a $12 million funding round to support a new remote lab platform aimed at significantly decreasing the time it takes to research and develop new medicines.
Sacramento, California-based Persist AI announced the funding round last week, as well as the launch of its new Cloud Lab platform, which allows pharmaceutical companies to develop formulations in their lab via the web. The platform’s goal is to accelerate development and reduce the amount of formulation materials required by more traditional methods.
Pharmaceutical companies around the world can remotely access the Cloud Lab to test formulations to develop injectables, tablets and capsules and topical formulations.
The funding round was led by Burlingame, California-based Spero Ventures, and nine other funders joined Purdue Ventures and Lilly in supporting. Persist did not share how much each funder contributed.
Chad Pittman, president and CEO of Purdue Research Foundation, told IBJ in a written statement that Purdue Research Foundation made a “significant investment” in the funding round.
“Given the company’s strong alignment with Purdue University’s areas of excellence, particularly in advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing and the application of digital twins and AI, our investment was a clear and simple choice,” Pittman said.
Persist’s technology uses artificial intelligence to predict formulation recipes and allows pharmaceutical companies to test them using robotic systems. A recent project identified an injectable formulation in two months, according to Persist, compared to the industry standard of 10 to 15 months. During those two months, 700 formulations were built and tested.
“AI is enabling pharma to discover new molecules faster than ever. But a molecule that has poor shelf life cannot become a drug product that sits on a shelf,” Persist CEO Karthik Raman said in a written statement. “If you can find a new drug molecule, you can predict its formulation and use our robotic platform to build and test it in the real world.”
Announced at the same time as the funding round, Persist’s Cloud Lab allows scientists to test their formulations by remotely controlling a robotic lab. Not only does the AI-assisted formulation process move more quickly, but the testing also uses a fraction of the formulation materials typically required. Instead of 1000 milliliters of liquid and several grams of formulation, the company says it can produce results with 1 milliliter and milligrams of a drug.
“Every drug that reaches the market depends on an optimal formulation. While the industry has heavily invested in AI and predictive tools across the drug development pipeline, formulation has remained a blind spot—until now,” Sara Eshelman, general partner at Spero Ventures, said in a written statement. “Persist dramatically reduces both the time and cost at every stage of development, ultimately lowering the hurdle for investment in next-generation therapeutics like long-acting injectables.”
The Series A funding will support initiatives, including a manufacturing system for long-acting injectables, expanding the robotic lab and building data sets for the company’s AI models and expanding the capacity and range of formulations that the AI models and lab can predict, build and test.
Persist AI graduated from the California-based Y Combinator accelerator in 2023.
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