Welsh scientist makes potential $539m fortune from biotech flotation in US
by Julia Kollewe from on (#5Q7R2)
Value of Andrew Hopkins' Exscientia firm reaches market value of $2.9bn in Nasdaq IPO
A Welsh scientist who dreamed up his artificial intelligence biotech company while walking home from the laboratory is sitting on a potential $539m (400m) paper fortune after its $2.9bn stock market float.
The idea for Exscientia, an Oxford-based firm that uses artificial intelligence to develop medicines, dates back to the 1990s when Andrew Hopkins was a biophysics PhD student in Oxford. He researched potential treatments for HIV, but the process was so laborious that he thought there must a better way to design drugs.
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