Recursion, a clinical stage drug development company based in Salt Lake City, has entered into an agreement to merge with Exscientia of London, England. Exscientia is an AI-based platform that enables design and development of small molecule drugs.
“Our mission at Recursion is to decode biology to radically improve lives. We are leading the industry by integrating technology to map and navigate biology and chemistry to achieve this ambitious aim,” said Chris Gibson, co-founder and CEO of Recursion. “Today, with the announcement of our proposed combination with Exscientia, we leap closer to our vision of a full-stack technology-enabled small molecule discovery platform that we are confident has the potential to meaningfully improve the efficiency of drug discovery in the coming decade. The culmination of this vision, which we will build together with the team from Exscientia, will be the broader availability of high-quality medicines and lower prices for consumers.”
Gibson said the merger will launch therapeutic discovery collaborations with prominent biopharma companies, including Roche-Genentech, Sanofi, Bayer and Merck KGaA. Recursion will augment its scaled biology exploration and translational capabilities with Exscientia’s precision chemistry tools and capabilities, including its newly commissioned automated small molecule synthesis platform. Once integrated, the updated and evolved Recursion OS will enable the discovery and translation of higher-quality medicines more efficiently and at a higher scale, Gibson said.
Exscientia shareholders will receive 0.7729 shares of Recursion Class A common stock for each Exscientia ordinary share, with fractional shares paid in cash, a press release about the merger said. Recursion shareholders will own approximately 74 percent of the combined company. The combined company will go by the Recursion name and Gibson will continue as CEO. Exscientia Interim CEO David Hallett will join the combined company as chief scientific officer. The transaction is expected to close by early 2025.