BioNTech SE agreed to buy UK technology company InstaDeep Ltd. in a deal worth as much as £562 million ($684 million), giving the German biotech a greater ability to use artificial intelligence and machine learning in its work.
(Bloomberg) — BioNTech SE agreed to buy UK technology company InstaDeep Ltd. in a deal worth as much as £562 million ($684 million), giving the German biotech a greater ability to use artificial intelligence and machine learning in its work.
The deal is BioNTech’s biggest. It includes an upfront payment of £362 million in cash and shares, plus additional payments that could be worth about £200 million if certain milestones are reached in the future, the company said.
BioNTech is charting a path forward after working with Pfizer Inc. to develop the world’s best-selling Covid-19 vaccine. Its focus was on cancer before it turned to the Covid shot, and the company has long relied on advanced computing to help it tailor personalized vaccines to patients’ tumors.
The deal would help BioNTech use artificial intelligence in more areas, including in manufacturing. The company also agreed last week to work with the UK government to treat 10,000 cancer patients by 2030, a project that will rely on health and genomics data to more quickly identify patients.
“Our aim is to make BioNTech a technology company where AI is seamlessly integrated into all aspects of our work,” Chief Executive Officer Ugur Sahin said in a statement. The release confirmed an earlier Bloomberg News report.
BioNTech and London-based InstaDeep began working together in 2019, and in November 2020, they agreed to a multi-year collaboration that involved a joint-innovation lab. The companies developed an early-warning system for new Covid variants.
The biotech company took an equity stake in InstaDeep as part of the company’s Series B financing round in January 2022. The acquisition will add about 240 people to BioNTech’s staff. The company’s American depositary receipts were little changed in trading before US exchanges opened.
(Updates with BioNTech ADRs pre-market in last paragraph)
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