PolyModels Hub raises £7m to de-risk pharma process development with AI models
This article covers PolyModels Hub, a healthtech startup, which has raised £7m in a Series A to develop a digital platform to speed and de-risk biopharma process development. The funding supports hiring in engineering and product and wider commercial deployment of the ModelFlow platform, targeting pharmaceutical developers and contract manufacturers to reduce experimental workloads and accelerate process development.
PolyModels Hub, a healthtech startup, has raised £7 million in a Series A to develop a digital platform aimed at speeding and de-risking biopharma process development. The funding is earmarked for hiring across engineering and product, further development of its ModelFlow platform, and wider commercial deployment — a move that matters because process development is a major cost and time sink in drug manufacture.
Why it matters
Developing a new medicine is expensive and slow. Industry estimates put the cost of bringing a drug to market at about $2.5 billion, with roughly $650 million of that spent on process development. Process work can dominate timelines and regulatory submissions, particularly as companies move into complex biologics and new modalities.
PolyModels Hub positions ModelFlow as a way to reduce that burden by combining modelling, simulation and structured workflows. If the platform can reliably cut experimental workloads at scale, it could shorten development timelines and reduce the number of lab experiments needed to qualify manufacturing processes — outcomes that have direct commercial and regulatory value for pharmaceutical companies and contract manufacturers.
Inside the product
ModelFlow integrates physics-based and AI-driven models with workflow and data management. The platform is described as a single environment where scientists and engineers can design, simulate and optimise processes while maintaining traceability for regulatory purposes.
According to the company, early deployments have cut experimental workloads by more than 90%, turning workflows that once required around 100 experiments into fewer than ten while maintaining or improving scientific robustness. The firm also says it is prioritising capabilities around process and regulatory workflows to make adoption easier for large pharmaceutical organisations.
Technically, PolyModels Hub emphasises connectivity between models, experiments and decisions so teams can reduce repeated manual work, accelerate process understanding and surface actionable recommendations earlier in development. The company also plans to focus on complex biologics and on automation driven by AI as it builds toward a broader digital layer spanning discovery through to commercial manufacture.
Who are the investors?
The Series A totals £7 million and is led by Molten Ventures, with participation from Marathon Venture Capital.
In the announcement, Ben Wilkinson, CEO, Molten Ventures, said:
PolyModels Hub is solving a real pain point for pharma teams, bringing together deep domain expertise and cutting-edge technology in a way that’s genuinely transformative. We’re proud to support Antonio B, Antonio Y, Harry and the team as they scale their impact across the industry. What impressed us most is the team’s blend of technical know-how and deep understanding of their customers’ challenges. They’ve built a solution that delivers value in weeks, not years, and its rapid adoption across the industry speaks volumes.
In the announcement, Alex Alexakis, Partner, Marathon Venture Capital, said:
Despite the technological and scientific progress, a large part of pharma still runs on archaic lab processes, delaying patients’ access to life-changing medicines. We are privileged to be day one partners with PolyModels Hub as they redefine how the industry designs, tests, and improves drug development processes using data and automation
Molten Ventures is a prominent European VC with a portfolio spanning fintech, security and deep tech, including Revolut, Ledger and ICEYE. That breadth suggests the firm continues to back software-driven platforms with potential for international scale. Marathon Venture Capital is an early-stage fund with over €175 million under management and first investments in companies such as Causaly, Augmenta, Hack The Box and Learnworlds, indicating a focus on founder-led software and analytics businesses.
Taken together, the round signals continuing investor appetite for tools that promise operational leverage in biopharma process work and reflects interest from healthtech investors in digital platforms that bridge modelling, data and regulatory workflows.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, Antonio Benedetti, CEO & co-founder at PolyModels Hub, said:
The pharmaceutical industry is undergoing a once-in-a-generation digital transformation. In just 18 months, our technology and exceptional team have delivered tangible value across multiple programs, expanding these collaborations to a global scale. We’re investing deeply in complex biologics and advancing our platform to empower scientists with the model-based solutions they deserve to transform molecules into medicines for the 21st century
Benedetti’s comments underline the company’s product-led approach and its immediate commercial focus: hiring engineers and product staff, building out automation and pursuing larger pharma partnerships to scale deployments.
The bigger picture
PolyModels Hub’s funding arrives amid broader moves by drug developers to adopt digital tools that reduce experimental load and improve regulatory traceability. Regulators in the UK and Europe have been increasingly receptive to model-informed approaches where they are scientifically justified, and commercial pressure to shorten time-to-market is encouraging adoption of digital process-development platforms.
For UK and European life sciences, investments into platforms that connect data, models and workflows point to a shift from bespoke lab work toward repeatable, auditable digital processes. If ModelFlow and competitors can demonstrate consistent, reproducible gains across a range of modalities, they could become part of the infrastructure that helps smaller biotechs and large pharmaceutical firms alike bring medicines to patients faster.
The Series A highlights how software-focused companies in the life sciences are finding capital in Europe for products that promise operational and regulatory improvements, and it will be worth watching how PolyModels Hub translates early pilot success into wider industry adoption.
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