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Emerging biotech
Enveda, an AI drugmaker, banks $311M in venture funding
Enveda, which is using AI tools to mine plants and microbes for drug prospects, has three candidates in human testing for immune diseases and obesity.
Colorado-based AI drug discovery specialist Enveda Biosciences has raised $311 million in a Series E financing, a sum rivaling totals secured in some of the biotechnology sector’s larger initial public offerings this year.
In a Wednesday announcement, the startup said it would use the cash to continue advancing its pipeline of drugs through the clinic. Three are in human testing.
Enveda uses artificial intelligence to identify molecules in living organisms like plants and microbes and predict their structure and function. Its system then ranks these molecules by their drug potential, after which Enveda’s chemists turn the most promising ones into drug prospects. In June, Enveda CEO and founder Viswa Colluru told BioPharma Dive that the company is already evaluating 17 programs to emerge from that research.
“As much as the industry has gotten comfortable with the more iterative approaches, the thing that moves the needle for patients and seeds power law returns for companies is first-in-class mechanisms that shift the paradigm,” Colluru said at the time.
Earlier this year, Enveda revealed Phase 1 data from a pair of AI-designed programs for atopic dermatitis and obesity.
One of those programs, ENV-294, is a “molecular glue” that showed the potential to reduce eczema symptoms in a small, early clinical trial. Colluru said that Enveda’s drug, a pill, could help people who don’t respond to approved atopic dermatitis treatments like Dupixent. Phase 2 trials are underway in eczema and asthma.
Alongside that drug is ENV-308, which Enveda has billed as a “pill designed from the chemistry of exercise.” That experimental therapy mimics a hormone, “Lac-Phe,” the body releases after exercise or meals, and displayed an encouraging safety profile in early-stage testing. The company plans to test ENV-308’s ability to help people maintain weight loss after stopping GLP-1 use.
A third drug, ENV-6949, targets the TL1A pathway, a popular and emerging approach to treat inflammatory bowel disease.
“The way we think about it is, put multiple drugs into the clinic [and] strategically partner each of these at the time when the value inflection is right, such that we get both the validation and capital to move other chess pieces further along,” Colluru said in June.
Enveda’s Series E round was led by Catalio Capital Management and includes 16 other backers, among them Surveyor Capital, T. Rowe Price, Lux Capital and a sovereign wealth fund.
The company previously banked more than $530 million in venture backing, including a $150 million Series D round in 2025.
