Artificial intelligence technology company SandboxAQ has raised $300 million to accelerate development of technologies with applications in a range of industries, including the life sciences.
Palo Alto, California-based SandboxAQ, a spinout of Alphabet, specified that the new funding announced Wednesday will support development of large quantitative models (LQMs), which are models that process and analyze large datasets. That’s in contrast to large language models (LLMs) that analyze text.
SandboxAZ says its LQMs are used by companies in the life sciences, energy, financial services, government, telecommunications, and more. In drug research, LQMs can be used to run simulations of physical and chemical interactions to identify new biomarkers and optimize clinical development of experimental medicines. The company’s life science industry customers include Sanofi and Flagship Pioneering.
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“Large quantitative models are the next wave of AI as they provide a powerful ability to solve science and business problems for large industries including aerospace, biopharma, chemicals, defense, energy, finance, and more,” SandboxAQ CEO Jack Hidary said in a prepared statement. “The capital raise we are announcing today gives us additional resources to drive deep impact at scale. LLMs and LQMs are complementary platforms that are both needed in the world of B2B applications.”
SandboxAQ spun out of Alphabet in 2022. The following year, the company reportedly raised $500 million for cybersecurity and other quantum computing work. SandboxAQ has put some of that money to work through acquisitions that brought new technologies. In 2022, SandboxAQ acquired cybersecurity and encryption analysis software firm Cryptosense. At the beginning of this year, it bought computational chemistry company Good Chemistry. Financial terms for both deals were not disclosed.
SandboxAQ said the latest round of funding valued the company at $5.3 billion on a pre-money basis, before it received any new investment. Its disclosed investors include Fred Alger Management, T. Rowe Price Associates, Mumtalakat, Parkway Venture Capital, Breyer Capital, Rizvi Traverse, S32, US Innovative Technology Fund, Ava Investments, Eric Schmidt, Marc Benioff, David Siegel, Yann LeCun, and IQT.
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