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Mithrl, a software-as-a-service aimed at shortening drug R&D timelines, raised a $4 million seed led by Bonfire Ventures, CEO Vivek Adarsh tells Axios exclusively.

Why it matters: The drug discovery and preclinical testing process takes six years on average. 

How it works: Mithrl — co-founded by Adarsh and biologist Shara Balakrishnan — uses AI to process and analyze RNA sequencing data, which typically takes weeks.

It can take up to three months to get tangible results from a wet lab experiment, according to Adarsh. "On our platform, it takes less than three minutes," he adds. 

Mithrl is focused on the therapeutics and pharmaceutical space, as these biologists "are the ones who've struggled with this pain of (sequencing) RNAs," Adarsh says, though he notes the company could expand into other areas of synthetic biology.

The latest: Mithrl is approaching $1 million in revenue and working with a "handful" of biotech customers in the U.S. and Europe, Adarsh says.

What's next: The company could raise a Series A by the end of 2025, though the seed gives Mithrl more than two years of runway, the CEO says.

"We expect them to use that capital to get to several millions of recurring revenue," says Bonfire managing director Brett Queener.

"With this investment, the company should probably be north of $2 (million) to $3 million in recurring revenue," he says. "But the most important thing in my mind is that they probably have 15 to 30 customers that have been raving about Mithrl."

The seed funding proceeds will help Mithrl hire biologists, computational biologists and AI engineers.

Context: When doing diligence, Bonfire introduced the product to biotech contacts, Queener says.

"Their first view was, 'This is too good to be true. It can't be true. This can't really work,'" he recalls. "And when they dug into it, they realized that for the right data sets, it actually does work."

Exclusive: Mithrl raises $4M to speed drug discovery process

The company is using AI in hopes of shortening a years-long timeline for drug R&D.

Illustration of a pattern of pills with binary code on them

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Mithrl, a software-as-a-service aimed at shortening drug R&amp;D timelines, raised a $4 million seed led by Bonfire Ventures, CEO Vivek Adarsh tells Axios exclusively.Why it matters: The drug discovery and preclinical testing process <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="takes six years on average" data-vars-click-url="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03172-6" data-vars-content-id="7bc37361-b278-450b-ac4f-d56782e56f8b" data-vars-headline="Exclusive: Mithrl raises $4M to speed drug discovery process" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03172-6" target="_blank">takes six years on average</a>.

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Exclusive: Mithrl raises $4M to speed drug discovery process

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