SoftBank Ventures Korea (SBVK) said on Tuesday it led $10 million investment into TwoXar, a biopharmaceutical startup that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to identify and develop new medicines in series A round funding with U.S. venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.

SBVK is a subsidiary of SoftBank Korea, holding company of Japan’s SoftBank Group, one of the largest technology and telecommunications corporations in the world.

The Palo Alto-based TwoXar offers an AI platform to reduce the cost and time it takes to identify new drugs, which can often be up to 15 years. Most of the cost and time required for drug development incurs in identification of candidate materials.

TwoXar said its drug-discovery platform to merge cloud computing and big data with AI can expedite the drug development process to the point that viable candidates are ready for in vivo testing within weeks, rather than years. TwoXar has demonstrated its faster and cheaper approach to develop new drugs for several diseases such as liver cancer, type 2 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.

SoftBank Ventures said it has successfully led large projects with global pharmaceutical companies with its commitment to expanding treatment options for rare and common diseases, and will grow as a leader in the rapidly growing AI-based drug discovery market.

By Park Joon-hyung and Minu Kim

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