TL;DR

Isomorphic Labs, the London-based drug discovery company spun out of Google DeepMind, is seeking about £3.7 billion ($5 billion) at a valuation near £37 billion ($50 billion), Bloomberg reported on 4 November, citing unnamed sources. The company has not confirmed it, and details could change. For UK readers, this would be a very large price for a London company whose president says its work is still preclinical, resting on expectation rather than results.

What is known

The people who spoke to Bloomberg said the deal has not closed, and Isomorphic gave it no comment. Bloomberg had earlier reported early talks at up to $50 billion, so this firms up that account rather than changing the number.

It would follow quickly on a £1.6 billion ($2.1 billion) raise in May, when Thrive Capital took the lead and Alphabet joined. Isomorphic has also featured in our coverage of the UK Sovereign AI Fund programme, though this report says nothing about that fund.

The gap between value and evidence

The clinical picture is the part to watch. On stage at Bloomberg’s London tech conference on 2 November, company president Max Jaderberg said the work remains in preclinical trials and that Isomorphic is in its “first innings”. In January, chief executive Demis Hassabis had said the company expected human trials to begin before 2026 is out, so the coming weeks test that timetable.

Isomorphic was set up in 2021 to build on the AlphaFold protein-folding model, and it now competes with a range of AI-led medicine efforts, including OpenAI, which released a life sciences research model this year. In our view, the investor appetite says more about belief in the method than about any demonstrated medical outcome, because the report describes none yet.

Looking Forward

Watch for two announcements: confirmation of the round, including who leads it, and news on that end-2026 clinical target. In our view, a slip would not end the story, but it would change how a £37 billion valuation reads. For UK life sciences, the question is how much of that value stays here, and the company’s next hiring and research decisions will offer the first clues.