[Edaily Marketin Song Seung-Hyeon Reporter] Finding a new drug candidate is not the end of the story. No matter how effective a drug may be, it cannot become a pharmaceutical product if it clumps easily or deteriorates during storage. Such issues usually only come to light well into the development process—by which time years of effort and enormous costs have already been invested. This is precisely where the AI platform company MIRABO Biotechnology has focused its efforts.

According to the venture capital (VC) industry on the 22nd, StoneBridge Ventures, as the lead investor, invested 4 billion won in MIRABO Biotechnology in a pre-Series A round. FuturePlay also participated in this investment.

MIRABO was founded in Hong Kong in November 2024. It maintains its headquarters and wet lab in Hong Kong, while its research and development (R&D) subsidiary, responsible for AI platform development, is based in Shanghai, China. The division of roles between these two hubs is central to the company’s structure. When the Shanghai team develops an AI model, the Hong Kong wet lab validates the results through actual experiments. The validation data is then sent back to Shanghai to improve the model. This creates a cycle of AI predictions and experimental validation.

Founder and CEO Lee Kyung-ho earned a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from Osaka University in Japan and conducted postdoctoral research in bioinformatics at the University of Minnesota in the U.S. He subsequently led biopharmaceutical process development at LG Chem and was in charge of antibody drug R&D at the headquarters of the global pharmaceutical company Sanofi.

Most AI-driven drug discovery companies focus on identifying candidate compounds. On the other end of the spectrum are CDMO companies that excel in process development and manufacturing. Players that use AI to bridge the gap between the discovery of candidate compounds and the development of actual production processes are relatively rare. Mirabo’s AI platform, “MiRAiQ,” was designed to fill this gap.

MiRAiQ consists of three engines. “PRISM” analyzes the sequence and structure of candidate compounds to pre-evaluate whether they can be developed into actual drugs. It predicts, prior to experimentation, how stable a protein is, whether there is a risk of aggregation, and whether viscosity will become excessively high at high concentrations. “ORION” handles protein engineering to improve the identified candidate compounds. For example, it designs antibodies to bind more strongly to their targets. “IGNIS” optimizes the production process for biopharmaceuticals. Since biopharmaceuticals produced using living cells are highly sensitive to culture temperature, pH, and nutrient supply—which significantly affect yield and quality—IGNIS predicts optimal conditions by learning from existing experimental data.

These three technologies are interconnected. The workflow involves evaluating candidate compounds, refining them into better versions, and then developing processes for efficient production. The goal is to reduce time and costs by replacing the trial-and-error process of repeated experiments with AI-based predictions.

The business model is B2B-focused. Mirabo’s AI platform helps pharmaceutical and biotech companies optimize their candidate compounds and tackle process development challenges. The company is currently engaged in projects and joint research with pharmaceutical and biotech firms in South Korea and China, and is also collaborating with global biosimilar companies, CDMOs, and contract research organizations (CROs). In January, the company signed an agreement with CMP Scientific, an analytical equipment firm based in New York, U.S., and in March, it signed another agreement with IM Biologics, a South Korean bispecific antibody developer.

The medium- to long-term goal is to develop its own new drugs. Mirabo plans to expand the commercialization of its AI platform by 2028 and broaden its technological scope to include the early drug discovery stage. Subsequently, it will use the accumulated AI technology to build its own pipeline. The company’s vision is to solidify its revenue base through its platform business before expanding into a new drug development company.