Enveda secures $311M to bring more nature-derived AI drugs into clinical trials — SkimNews
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Enveda raised a $311 million Series E at a $2 billion valuation, led by Catalio Capital Management with participation from Iconiq and others.
- The new valuation doubles Enveda's worth from 12 months ago, reflecting rapid investor appetite for AI-driven natural-product drug discovery.
- Viswa Colluru, an early employee at Recursion Pharmaceuticals, founded Enveda in 2019 to harness medicines from plants and microbes using AI rather than synthesizing them from scratch.
- Enveda is currently testing multiple candidates in human clinical trials, including a treatment for severe skin conditions and a drug designed to help patients maintain weight loss after stopping GLP-1s.
- No AI-discovered drug has yet received FDA approval, placing Enveda among a wave of companies racing to advance machine-learning-derived candidates through the clinic.
- Enveda's thesis—that powerful medicines can be mined from nature and accelerated by AI—contrasts with traditional pharma's lab-synthesis approach to small-molecule discovery.
Why it matters: Enveda's valuation doubling to $2 billion in a year signals strong investor conviction that AI-discovered, nature-derived drugs can succeed where no AI-designed medicine has yet reached FDA approval. With candidates already in human trials—including a post-GLP-1 weight maintenance therapy—Enveda joins a competitive wave of firms trying to deliver the first clinically validated AI drug.
Ask SkimNews
