Standigm Secures $44.5 M in Pre-IPO Funding Round

SEOUL, South Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Standigm Inc. (“Standigm”), a leading Korean Artificial Intelligence (AI) company for drug discovery, announces today that it has closed $44.5 million in a pre-IPO funding round co-led by SKS PE and Daishin Private Equity. The round was joined by new investors in banking and technology, including SKS PE, Daishin Private Equity, InterVest, KDB Bank, and Asset One, with follow-on investments from Standigm’s Series B investors Kakao Ventures, LB Investment, Atinum Investment, DSC Investment, and Wonik Investment Partners. Standigm’s second-largest shareholder, SK holdings, also participated through acquiring existing shares. The closing marks the last round of funding before Standigm goes to its planned initial public offering (IPO) on the Korea Exchange (KRX) later this year.

Founded in 2015, Standigm has achieved full-stack AI-driven industrializing drug discovery. Standigm’s AI platforms range from new drug target discovery to novel drug lead generation, enabling pharmaceutical companies to save time and cost. Based on the automated and all-encompassing AI approach, Standigm currently collaborates with more than ten pharmaceutical or academic partners including leading Korean pharmaceutical companies such as SK chemicals, Hanmi Pharmaceuticals, HK inno.N, and Samjin Pharmaceutical. Standigm and its collaborator, SK holdings C&C opened iCLUE&ASK™, an AI-based drug target identification platform, to the public last September.

“Standigm is a highly innovative AI biotech leading the fourth industrial revolution,” Wonho Jeong, Director of SKS PE said. “We invest in Standigm with pride because we have found its strengths in the powerful and automated AI platforms to produce continuous lead compounds and its real-world business model.”

“The fund in this round will be used to bolster business-to-business sales through our advanced platform technology,” said Jinhan Kim, co-founder and CEO of Standigm. “We are actively working on FDA investigational new drug (IND) applications of our preclinical candidates and collaboration with global pharmaceutical companies to maximize Standigm’s enterprise value.”

Standigm continues to produce real-world evidence to promise a successful IPO. This January, Standigm announced that it repurposed an FDA-approved drug for rheumatoid arthritis and applied for a patent through a partnership with SK Chemicals. Two patents for Standigm’s own AI technology were granted by the Korean intellectual property office in 2021.

About Standigm Inc.

Standigm is an AI-driven drug discovery company. Applying its own innovative AI to the real world, Standigm currently has more than 20 preclinical pipelines across various therapeutic areas. Pursuing full-stack, AI-driven industrializing drug discovery, Standigm has achieved the automation of molecular design workflow through DarkMolFactory™, and the automation effort has been expanding to the whole drug discovery process on the basis of Standigm AI platforms, including Standigm ASK™ for target discovery, Standigm BEST™ for lead selection, and Standigm Insight™ for drug repurposing.

Founded in 2015, Standigm has raised total $68 M from leading investors and developed an elite team with multi-disciplinary expertise in pharmacology, chemistry, biology, artificial intelligence, and data structures to ease the pains of patients all over the world. Learn more at https://www.standigm.com.