Enveda raises $311M to push AI-discovered drugs into more trials

Enveda, a biotech startup that uses AI to discover new drugs in the natural world, has raised a $311 million Series E at a $2 billion valuation. Catalio Capital Management led the round, with participation from Iconiq and other investors. The new valuation doubles what Enveda achieved just 12 months ago.

The company’s premise is that powerful medicines can be harnessed from plants and microbes, rather than synthesized from scratch in a lab. Viswa Colluru, an early employee at Recursion Pharmaceuticals, founded Enveda in 2019 to speed up the process of discovering these nature-derived drugs by combining AI with other techniques.

AI has not yet produced a single FDA-approved drug, but Enveda is part of a broader wave of companies now pushing AI-discovered drug candidates into human clinical trials rather than stopping at the discovery stage. The startup is currently testing several such drugs in patients. One candidate targets severe skin conditions, while another is designed to help people maintain weight loss after they stop taking GLP-1 medications.

Why it matters

The raise shows investors are still willing to fund AI-driven drug discovery well ahead of any regulatory win, betting that clinical-stage progress — not an FDA approval — is enough to justify doubling a biotech’s valuation in a single year.