Czech Tensor Ventures backs Antiverse as part of $3M investment round

Prague-based deeptech fund Tensor Ventures has invested in Antiverse, a UK-based biotechnology company. The $3 million investment round was also supported by InnoSpark, AngelHub, Kadmos Capital, Tomorrow Scale, Deep Science Ventures, and others.

• Antiverse was founded in 2017 by Ben Holland, Murat Tunaboylu, and Rowina Westermeier. It is a biotech company developing a computational antibody drug discovery platform. It exists at the intersection of structural biology, machine learning, and medicine to enable breakthroughs to happen more quickly and cost-effectively.
• The company has announced both the funding news and the successful identification of 8 antibodies with therapeutic potential for human G-protein-coupled receptors. This marks a major breakthrough in the application of their drug discovery platform.

“We see tremendous potential in the Antiverse platform. Their combination of AI-driven antibody design with proprietary laboratory validation shows great promise in targeting historically challenging GPCRs linked to cancer and a wide variety of other conditions. We congratulate the team on their achievement in the pursuit of bringing new treatments to patients,”

Matt Fates, a board member at Antiverse and partner at InnoSpark, comments.

• Tensor Ventures participated in the round as an existing investor. It is a Prague-based venture capital company Investing in deeptech and sustainable innovation in the CEE region and beyond. The firm offers a bridge between seed and Series A stages, with an investment size of up to $2 million per target.
• The majority of the funding was provided by new investors InnoSpark Ventures, AngelHub, Kadmos Capital, and Tomorrow Scale. Apart from Tensor, the existing investors Deep Science Ventures, Ed Parkinson, and the Development Bank of Wales also joined in.
• Antiverse will use the fresh funds to continue in-house development of the antibodies showing the highest affinity blocking function, making them ideal starting points for future therapies.