BenevolentAI is about to end a year of large-scale medical technology special purpose acquisition company transaction and has agreed to merge with SPAC Odyssey, which is equivalent to the largest SPAC merger in European history.

The reverse merger scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of next year will make BenevolentAI a listed company on the Euronext Amsterdam Stock Exchange. At that time, the post-investment valuation of the newly listed company headquartered in London is expected to be 1.5 billion euros, or approximately 1.7 billion U.S. dollars.

In the process of merging with Odyssey, BenevolentAI will receive a net income of up to 390 million euros. These include fully committed private investments of 135 million euros from the company's existing partners Temasek and AstraZeneca, as well as other investors (including Ally Bridge Group, Invus, etc.).

"By pioneering a revolutionary drug discovery and development method, BenevolentAI has become a defined category of business. Our artificial intelligence platform enables scientists to use biomedical and experimental data on a large scale to understand the root causes of diseases and faster To develop more effective drugs," CEO Joanna Shields said in a statement.

"The combination with Odyssey will allow us to expand our vision and ambitions, combining purposeful technology and cutting-edge science to discover life-changing drugs," Shields said.

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BenevolentAI's platform uses machine learning and other artificial intelligence tools to analyze clinical databases to help researchers discover new molecular targets and design new drugs for the treatment of complex diseases, and then match these compounds with the most sensitive patient subgroup.

In turn, the reverse merger will help the company continue to develop the platform and accelerate its plans to produce more potential drug candidates, joining more than 20 internal projects already in its pipeline.

To help oversee the rapid growth plan, Sanofi's former CEO Olivier Brandicourt and former Natixis Investment Managers and current Odyssey co-CEO Jean Raby will join the company's board of directors after the SPAC transaction is completed.

Brandicourt said: “BenevolentAI has provided a lot of evidence for the effectiveness and efficiency of its platform, especially through the quality of its existing candidate pipeline and the strong and expanding cooperation with AstraZeneca.” “We believe that BenevolentAI has the capability to do so. Continue to produce first-class and first-class project pipelines, and become a key player in the global drug discovery field."

Related: AstraZeneca, BenevolentAI focus on computer-generated chronic kidney disease drug targets

The long-term partnership with AstraZeneca is also expected to continue to develop. In addition to the news of the SPAC merger, BenevolentAI also announced the expansion of its cooperation, which was originally established in April 2019 to apply artificial intelligence to the design of drugs for kidney disease and pulmonary fibrosis.

Earlier this year, the two launched the first product of the partnership. The new drug target is determined by BenevolentAI's predictive machine learning tool, and then experimentally verified by AstraZeneca. With new goals, researchers at large pharmaceutical companies can begin to design a drug to track the specific cellular mechanisms behind chronic kidney disease.

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