news/GOOGL/2023.01.10/Germany's BioNTech buys British AI startup InstaDeep.txt

Jan 10 (Reuters) - BioNTech SE has agreed to
acquire British artificial intelligence (AI) startup InstaDeep
for up to 562 million pounds ($682 million) to speed up its
biotech research and manufacturing capabilities.Under the German vaccine maker's largest takeover deal to
date, BioNTech is to pay 362 million pounds upfront, in a mix of
cash and an unspecified number of BioNTech shares, and up to 200
million pounds contingent on InstaDeep's future performance."Our goal with the acquisition is to integrate AI seamlessly
in all aspects of our work - from target discovery, lead
discovery to manufacturing and delivery of our products,"
BioNTech co-founder and Chief Executive Ugur Sahin said at the
J.P. Morgan healthcare conference on Tuesday.Sahin also cited BioNTech's partnership last week with
the U.K. government for development of personalized cancer
therapies and how AI would help in that.The transaction adds to a slew of deals as the industry
meets in San Francisco for the conference this week.With estimated COVID-19 vaccine revenues of up to 17 billion
euros ($18.2 billion) in 2022 alone, BioNTech is well funded to
advance its work on new cancer immunotherapies and on other
vaccines, and AI will play a growing role.BioNTech was part of a group of investors who participated
in a $100 million financing round at InstaDeep a year ago. It
declined to say precisely how much it had invested then or what
share of InstaDeep it held.BioNTech said it was already involved in dozens of joint
projects with InstaDeep, including efforts unveiled last year to
quickly determine whether a new coronavirus variant is a cause
for concern.InstaDeep, with about 240 staff, will continue to provide
its AI and machine learning services to other companies,
including Google and Nvidia, the statement
added.
($1 = 0.9325 euros)
($1 = 0.8244 pounds)
(Reporting by Ludwig Burger, Pratik Jain and Leroy Leo; Editing
by Shinjini Ganguli, Shailesh Kuber and Maju Samuel)