Biotech firm Nuritas has raised €16m in Series A funding, in a round led by Chicago-based Cultivian Sandbox Ventures.

The Dublin startup launched in 2014 and has raised around €25m to date. It uses artificial intelligence to analyse food constituents that can be used for drug production.

Investors in Nuritas include U2’s Bono and The Edge, as well as Enterprise Ireland and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. Nuritas had accumulated losses of €2.2m on its 2016 balance sheet, which also disclosed net worth of €5.2m. The company was founded by Nora Khaldi and began its life in NovaUCD.

Emmet Brown, CEO of Nuritas, explained that bioactive peptides – the constituents analysed by Nuritas’s software – are known to play a role in managing diabetes.

“The current methods of identifying those that may work is time-consuming, inefficient and expensive. Our artificial intelligence platform has already disrupted this antiquated process by targeting, predicting and unlocking peptides that can positively impact in conditions like pre-diabetes, while reducing the cost and time needed to find them.”

In Association with

Nora Khaldi said that the fresh investment will help accelerate Nuritas’s route to market and explore new disease areas.

“What is so exciting is that the inflammation ingredient launching in the US next year is actually the first healthcare ingredient that has been fully discovered through the use of artificial intelligence,” she added.

Photo: Emmet Browne and Nora Khaldi (Pic: Kieran Harnett)