• Tunisia-born InstaDeep has closed its Series B round at $100 million, led by Alpha Intelligence Capital together with CDIB, alongside BioNTech, Chimera Abu Dhabi, Deutsche Bahn’s DB Digital Ventures, Google, G42 and Synergie. 
• Founded in 2014 by Karim Beguir and Zohra Slim, the London-headquartered startup boosts local AI communities by providing them with events, training and open-sourcing software.
• InstaDeep will use the funding to advance its computing infrastructure optimised for decision-making AI, recruit talent and accelerate the launch of AI products across multiple industries.

Press release:

InstaDeep, a leader in advanced AI decision-making systems for solving real-world problems, announced today it has raised $100 million and closed a Series B round led by Alpha Intelligence Capital together with CDIB. 

Investors in the round include BioNTech, Chimera Abu Dhabi, Deutsche Bahn’s DB Digital Ventures, Google, G42 and Synergie. 

InstaDeep will use the funding to advance its high-performance computing infrastructure optimised for decision-making AI, continue to hire elite talent and accelerate the launch of disruptive AI products across multiple industries – including biotech, logistics, transportation and electronics manufacturing. The firm will expand its global presence into the United States.

A vast majority (81%) of executives say AI will either be critically important or very important to their business in 2022, according to CNBC’s latest Technology Executive Council survey. African-founded InstaDeep helps companies improve crucial parts of their operations by harnessing AI technologies such as Reinforcement Learning, a type of machine learning that helps design effective optimization strategies for an array of challenges, from therapeutics development to railway operations and more. 

“This funding round is a tremendous vote of confidence from our partners BioNTech, Google and Deutsche Bahn after working closely with us on innovative, high-impact AI initiatives,” said Karim Beguir, Co-Founder and CEO of InstaDeep. “And we are very excited to get the support of Alpha Intelligence Capital, Chimera, Synergie and G42 as we see wide-ranging opportunities to deploy our AI products to tackle complex real-world problems.” 

AI x Vaccines and Variants

InstaDeep and BioNTech formed a multi-year strategic collaboration in 2020 to launch a joint AI innovation lab to deploy the latest advances in Artificial Intelligence and machine learning to develop novel immunotherapies. As part of this collaboration, the two companies created an AI-powered Early Warning System (EWS) for detecting high-risk SARS-CoV-2 variants. The EWS identified more than 90 per cent of World Health Organization designated variants on average two months ahead of time. It detected Omicron on the day its sequence became available among more than 70,000 novel variants discovered in October and November 2021.

Google and Deutsche Bahn AI Collaborations

InstaDeep collaborates with Google on AI initiatives and has published joint research with DeepMind and Google Research. InstaDeep is also working on a moonshot product to automate railway scheduling with Deutsche Bahn, the largest rail operator and infrastructure owner in Europe.

InstaDeep, now based in London, began in 2014 in Tunis in North Africa, with two laptops, $2000 and, according to Beguir, “a lot of enthusiasm”. From the start, he and Co-Founder Zohra Slim have made boosting local AI communities central to InstaDeep’s mission, through events, training and open-sourcing software. InstaDeep is proud to have engineers and researchers in South Africa, Nigeria, Tunisia and the UAE alongside its teams in France and the UK.

Boris Kuehn, Managing Director, DB Digital Ventures, commented: “InstaDeep has demonstrated unique capabilities in solving very complex railway problems using groundbreaking AI-first technologies. The team’s skills and thought leadership in this space have paved the way for the adoption of cutting-edge AI technologies in the railway domain. We are happy to join the investment round and enable a stronger partnership with Deutsche Bahn to jointly harness the potential of applying AI.” 

Arnaud Barthelemy, Partner and COO, Alpha Intelligence Capital, commented on the news saying: “As the first global fund fully dedicated to artificial intelligence and machine learning, we are particularly proud to have led this Series B round, together with first-class co-investors. InstaDeep is a deep technology company that disrupts traditional approaches in crucial areas as they do with BioNTech for drug discovery or with Deutsche Bahn for railway scheduling. We are thrilled to join this exciting adventure and eager to help support InstaDeep’s growth through our unique AI expertise.