Inside Big Pharma and VC’s big bet on AI: You wouldn’t ‘want to fly an airplane designed by hand, but all of our drugs are designed like that’

In the high-stakes world of modern medicine, finding a cure should be mathematically impossible. Researchers estimate there are 10^60 possible chemical compounds—or 10 to the 60th power, a number greater than the stars in the observable universe—yet only a microscopic fraction will ever become viable medicines. Now, a convergence of big pharma legacy and venture capital investment is betting billions that artificial intelligence can finally decode this infinite complexity.

One of the leaders of this movement is Isomorphic Labs...