Turbine Raises $25M to Bring “Virtual Cells” Into Drug Discovery

Live announcement feat. Szabi Nagy, Founder and CEO of Turbine

Budapest-based biotech company Turbine has raised a $25 million Series B round to accelerate the development of its AI-powered biological simulation platform. The round was led by Interactive Venture Partners and Bayer’s venture arm, with participation from existing investors including Accel and Merck.

Founded in 2015, Turbine is working on one of the toughest challenges in biology: understanding how cells behave well enough to predict how drugs will work before experiments even begin. Instead of relying only on lab experiments and animal testing, Turbine’s technology creates AI-powered “virtual cells” that allow scientists to simulate experiments digitally.

The implications could be significant. Drug discovery remains slow and expensive, often costing billions of dollars to bring a single drug to market, much of it spent on failed trials and experiments. By running experiments in simulation first, Turbine aims to help researchers focus on the most promising ideas earlier—saving time, reducing costs, and improving the odds of success.

The company has already worked with major pharmaceutical companies including Bayer, AstraZeneca, and Merck. Now, Turbine is shifting from research collaborations toward becoming part of the everyday infrastructure of drug discovery, integrating its simulation tools directly into how scientists work.

Beyond cancer research, Turbine’s models are beginning to simulate other cell types and biological systems, opening opportunities in areas such as immunology and dermatology. The broader ambition is clear: use AI and simulation to make biology more predictable.

If that vision succeeds, drug discovery could begin to look less like trial and error and more like engineering.

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