Cambridge and London key as BenevolentAI shuts New York operation
The company says it has continued to make significant commercial progress but had identified the need to pull in its horns financially to underpin its strength moving forward.
BenevolentAI , which also made widespread job cuts last year, says it will focus on its AI-driven drug discovery collaboration and proprietary pipeline revenue generating pillars, following recent successes in these areas. The board believes this focus will likely bring the greatest potential return for shareholders.
Following completion of the market assessment of its Knowledge Exploration Tools, as noted at the time of the company’s full year results on March 14, work on this area will cease, given the investment needed to fully commercialise this SaaS product and the estimated timeframe to see a potential meaningful financial return.
Since September, the company says it has made significant operational progress on multiple fronts, including signing a collaboration with Merck KGaA with a potential $594 million in revenue generation.
It has also announced positive top line Phase Ia data on its lead asset BEN-8744 for the treatment of ulcerative colitis, as well as making significant changes to strengthen its executive leadership team.
The company warned just last month that major action was required to steady the ship and keep it from the rocks.
Regarding shutting down its US operations, BenevolentAI said: “It is imperative for the operational effectiveness of the company to have strong integration between its technology and scientific teams and management believes this can be best achieved over its two largest sites in London and Cambridge, UK.
“While investment will continue to be made into the company’s pipeline programmes and development of the BenevolentAI Platform™, the amended business priorities outlined above will result in a reduced cash burn of c.20 per cent which will extend the company’s cash runway to late Q3 2025.
“The company will continue to explore all opportunities to fund the cash runway gap to year end 2025, at which time further larger milestones are expected to be received from existing partner programmes.
“These opportunities include potentially signing new drug discovery collaborations and out-licensing of the company’s proprietary pipeline assets, where ongoing discussions with third parties are making good progress.”
BenevolentAI CEO, Dr Joerg Moeller, said: “While these situations are always difficult, as a company we have a duty to our shareholders to optimise capital allocation in the areas where we believe the potential return is the greatest. BenevolentAI is an AI augmented drug discovery company uniting science and technology with the aim to develop life-changing medicines for patients.
“Therefore, I believe that focusing our organisation on furthering our drug discovery collaborations and progressing our proprietary pipeline is the best way to achieve both the goal, of delivering value creation for our shareholders and delivering innovative medicines to patients suffering from very serious medical conditions.”
