Thrive Capital Courts Alphabet's Isomorphic Labs — SkimNews
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- Thrive Capital flew to London in late 2024 to court Isomorphic Labs, an Alphabet AI offshoot that had previously kept outside investors at bay and wasn't actively raising money.
- The courtship lasted 18 months; most investors deemed it futile, but Thrive Capital partner Avery Klemmer said: "when someone says something's impossible. I think we see a challenge."
- Founded around AlphaFold, Isomorphic Labs builds on a protein modeling tool that stunned scientists and served as the basis for a Nobel Prize in chemistry.
- Isomorphic's stated goal is turning AlphaFold into a drug discovery engine — what Klemmer called "an intensely exciting prize" with the potential to prove AI is more than hype.
- The article leaves open the central question: whether — and how — Isomorphic will actually deliver on translating AlphaFold into new medicines.
Why it matters: An investor landing a stake in Isomorphic — the commercial vehicle for Nobel-winning AlphaFold technology — gets early access to a potential AI-driven drug pipeline. If Isomorphic translates AlphaFold into actual medicines, it would be tangible proof protein-modeling AI can move beyond research into therapeutics; if it doesn't, Thrive Capital's 18-month courtship risks looking like capital chasing hype.
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