Hassabis regularly works until 4 AM, and that’s partly the nature of leading AI at Alphabet. The Google DeepMind cofounder also has another company: Isomorphic Labs, the AI drug discovery startup he spun out of Google in 2021. 

I profiled Hassabis and Isomorphic earlier this year, and caught up with him recently as the company hit a new milestone: This month, Isomorphic raised a new $2.1 billion Series B, led by Thrive Capital, with the intention of “turbocharging” its next phase. That means scaling compute, generating more data, and building out programs. (Though we covered the raise in Term Sheet, it only seemed right to bring you more of the interview.) So, I asked Hassabis: What can you “turbocharge,” and what will always involve friction in the grueling drug discovery process?

“Wherever there’s friction, we don’t really accept that, for starters,” he told Fortune. “But near-term, the obvious thing is more compute… It’s not the same amount of compute an AGI lab needs, but with more compute, the more experiments we can do, the more inferences we can run.”

As Hassabis thinks about the logistics of the future, he’s also thinking about Isomorphic’s infrastructure and the possibility of automated labs: “I’ve no doubt that, at some point, we will go out and do that, but we want to get the timing right,” he said. “There’s still more research to be done on the automation piece, and on the specific repeatable steps you’d want to automate.”

Drug discovery is, historically, a scientific process that involves a spectacular amount of trial and error. And often, even when a drug beats the low odds of making it to clinical trials, it’s rarer still for a new pharmaceutical to make it to full FDA approval. Isomorphic has yet to bring a drug into clinical trials. Hassabis declined to offer a timeline, but the implication is certainly that the goal is sooner rather than later. 

“What I can say is that we’re in pre-clinical with a bunch of our programs, and it’s going very well,” he said. “The new funding, the new partnerships [including with J&J and Novartis]… there’s enough data points if you want to extrapolate how things are going.” 

The thing about Isomorphic is that the measure of success won’t be one drug.

“It’s actually about building the platform to solve the overall problem, solving all disease, right,” said Hassabis. “We don’t measure ourselves by one individual program.”

The name Isomorphic is derived from the mathematical principle of two entities that look different but have the same underlying structure.

“It’s biology on one hand, and information science on the other hand,” said Hassabis. “I think biology can be thought of as information. Cells can be thought of as information structures. So, in my opinion, AI is the perfect tool or description language for biology—to understand the isomorphic connection between information structures, and biological structures.”

There’s also a sly nod to the movie Tron: Legacy, Hassabis adds. Isomorphic employees call themselves “Isos,” and in the Tron sequel, the protagonist also refers to Isos as “amazing programs that come and solve disease,” Hassabis laughs. For all his ability to wrangle data and AI, and articulate those futures, there’s at least one thing he’s uncertain about.

“If you asked me, what’s the number one mystery about reality, I’d say it’s time,” said Hassabis. “What is it? It’s kind of crazy that we don’t know, other than a bit of hand-wavy: ‘well, entropy increases in one direction, and it doesn’t the other way.’ That’s not a satisfying answer to the conscious experience of time. It’s the number one thing I want to understand. I also feel that life’s too short and we don’t have enough of it. That’s maybe why I’ve been in a rush my whole life.”

See you tomorrow,

Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com

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VENTURE CAPITAL

- Stord, an Atlanta, Ga.-based commerce enablement platform that combines fulfillment, warehousing, and shipping with integrated software for consumer brands, raised $250 million in Series F funding from Strike Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, Franklin Templeton, Baillie Gifford, and others.

- OpenRouter, a New York City-based unified API that gives developers access to 400-plus AI models from a single interface, raised $113 million in Series B funding. CapitalG led the round and was joined by NVentures, ServiceNow Ventures, MongoDB Ventures, Snowflake Ventures, Databricks Ventures, and existing investors.

- WeRoad, a Milan, Italy-based mall-group adventure travel platform for solo travelers, raised $58 million in Series C funding. Airbnb led the round and was joined by H14 and others.

- NavigateAI, a San Francisco-based AI platform for the construction and real estate industries, raised $25 million in funding. Elad Gil led the round and was joined by Khosla Ventures, Lennar, Tishman Speyer, Helix Electric, and angel investors.

- P2 Science, a Woodbridge, Conn.-based producer of plant-based specialty chemicals for the personal care, fragrance, and performance materials markets, raised $23 million in funding. Sofinnova Partners led the round and was joined by Emerald Technology Ventures, GS Futures, and existing investors.

- Quanscient, a Tampere, Finland-based developer of cloud and quantum computing software for multiphysics simulation, raised €10 million ($11.6 million) in Series A funding. 55 North and B&C Group led the round and were joined by existing investors.

- Avrea, a Helsinki, Finland-based Continuous Integration platform built for the agentic AI era of software development, raised $4.7 million in pre-seed funding. Earlybird led the round.

- Canyon Code, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based developer of enterprise software that helps companies monitor and govern multi-agent AI applications, raised $5 million in pre-seed funding. Cota Capital led the round and was joined by Newbuild Venture Capital and Blackhorn Ventures.

PRIVATE EQUITY

- Accelerated Wealth Partners, backed by J.C. Flowers, acquired a minority stake in Brooklyn Fi, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based wealth management firm. Financial terms were not disclosed.

- Arsenal Capital Partners acquired a majority stake in Velcro Companies, a Manchester, N.H.-based provider of specialty hook & loop fastening products. Financial terms were not disclosed.

EXITS

- Oakley Capital acquired a majority stake in XTEL, a Leuven, Belgium-based AI-powered revenue management platform for consumer packaged goods companies, from Bain Capital and SilverTree Equity. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

- Poppulo, backed by Vista Equity Partners, acquired Sociabble, a Paris, France-based employee communications and advocacy platform, from Ardian. Financial terms were not disclosed.

IPOS

- Quantinuum, a Broomfield, Colo.-based quantum computing company and spin-out of Honeywell, plans to raise up to $1.06 billion in an offering of 21.1 million shares priced between $45 and $50 on the Nasdaq. 

- Applied Aerospace & Defense, a Huntsville, Ala.-based manufacturer for the space and defense industries, plans to raise up to $682.5 million in an offering of 32.5 million shares priced between $18 and $21 on the New York Stock Exchange. The company posted $522 million for the year ended March 31. Greenbriar Equity Group backs the company.

- Safepoint Holdings, a Tampa, Fla.-based homeowners and commercial insurance underwriter, plans to raise up to $283.9 million in an offering of 16.7 million shares priced between $15 and $17 on the New York Stock Exchange. The company posted $572 million in sales for the year ended March 31.

- WhiteHawk, a Philadelphia, Pa.-based gas mineral and royalty business, plans to raise up to $186.3 million in an offering of 6.9 million shares priced between $25 and $27 on the New York Stock Exchange. The company posted $68 million in sales for the year ended Dec. 31. Omega Capital Partners backs the company.

PEOPLE

 - Arsenal Capital Partners, a New York City-based private equity firm, hired Bradley Brown as an Investment Partner. Previously, he was with KKR.