SandboxAQ has announced a significant funding round of over $300 million from prominent investors including Fred Alger Management, T. Rowe Price Associates, Mumtalakat, and notable individuals like Eric Schmidt, Marc Benioff and Yann LeCun. The funding values the company at $5.3 billion pre-money and will be used to accelerate the development of Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) and AI applications across various sectors.
The company positions LQMs as complementary to Large Language Models (LLMs), focusing on solving complex scientific and business problems. Eric Schmidt, Chairman of SandboxAQ, emphasizes that enterprises need to look beyond LLMs and embrace LQMs to maximize their AI investments. Yann LeCun, a Turing Award winner, endorsed the company’s approach, stating that quantitative AI will define work in major economic sectors.
Throughout 2024, SandboxAQ made significant progress across multiple divisions:
- AQBioSim, their drug discovery division, expanded partnerships with academic institutions and biopharma companies. They launched IDOLPro, a generative AI application for rapid drug molecule design, and advanced their work on neurodegenerative diseases.
- The AQChemSim division achieved notable improvements in materials science, collaborating with NVIDIA to increase computational chemistry capabilities by 80x. Working with NOVONIX, they reduced lithium-ion battery life prediction time by 95% while increasing accuracy 35x using 50x less data.
- In healthcare, SandboxAQ launched AQMed and its first product, CardiAQ, a magnetocardiography device for heart signal analysis. They established research partnerships with Mayo Clinic, Mount Sinai Medical Center, and UCSF Medical Center.
- The AQNav division made progress in GPS-alternative navigation, using quantum sensors to detect Earth’s magnetic field. They achieved new milestones with the U.S. Air Force, leading to a contract extension for exploring additional configurations across various aircraft.
- In cybersecurity, their AQtive Guard division expanded its partnership with Accenture to deploy cryptography management solutions across financial services and life sciences sectors.
CEO Jack D. Hidary emphasizes that this funding will help drive deeper impact at scale, particularly in aerospace, biopharma, chemicals, defense, energy, and finance. Jim Breyer of Breyer Capital describes SandboxAQ as a generation-defining company, praising its approach to uniting science and AI to address global challenges. The financing was advised by J.P. Morgan.
The press release can be read there.