TMTPOST -- Insilico Medicine, an artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery company backed by Qiming Venture Partners, made its debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Tuesday in what became the city’s largest biotech initial public offering of the year.

Shares in Insilico Medicine (03696.HK) were priced at HK$24.05 in the IPO, opened at HK$35.00 in their first trade and gave the company a market capitalisation of about HK$19.51 billion ($2.5 billion), according to exchange data.

The listing marks a milestone for the 2014-founded company, which uses artificial intelligence to design and develop new drugs, and reflects growing investor interest in the application of AI across healthcare and life sciences.

Venture capital firm Qiming Venture Partners led Insilico Medicine’s Series B financing round in 2019 and continued to back the company in its Series C and D rounds. Before the IPO, Qiming held about 7% of Insilico Medicine’s shares, making it one of the company’s largest institutional investors.

Insilico Medicine’s business is centred on its proprietary Pharma.AI platform, which it uses both for in-house drug discovery and for collaborations with pharmaceutical companies. The firm has built a pipeline of more than 30 drug discovery projects spanning areas such as oncology, immunology, fibrosis and metabolic diseases, and says it is advancing some of the world’s fastest-moving AI-driven drug development programmes.

The company has also expanded the use of its platform into other fields, including advanced materials, agriculture, nutrition and veterinary medicine.

To date, 13 of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies by revenue have partnered with Insilico Medicine on software and platform collaborations, the company said. It has also signed three pipeline licensing deals with global drugmakers including Exelixis and Italy’s Menarini, agreements that could generate up to $2 billion in potential payments if development and regulatory milestones are met.

Other partners include major pharmaceutical groups such as Sanofi, Eli Lilly and Fosun Pharma.

Founder and Chief Executive Officer Alex Zhavoronkov said the IPO would help the company accelerate its mission of extending healthy human lifespan through technology.

“We have demonstrated the end-to-end capability of AI-powered drug discovery, from target identification and molecule generation through to preclinical and clinical development,” Zhavoronkov said in a statement. “We will continue to invest heavily in our AI platform and pipeline to bring more differentiated and accessible therapies to patients worldwide.”

Dr Kan Chen, partner and co-head of healthcare innovation at Qiming Venture Partners, said the firm invested in Insilico Medicine in 2019 based on the belief that AI would fundamentally change the efficiency of drug development.

“At that time, generative AI was still far from mainstream,” Chen said. “Today, through preclinical validation and licensing agreements, its value is becoming increasingly tangible.”

The successful listing comes amid renewed investor interest in biotechnology and artificial intelligence-related stocks in Asia, following a subdued period for healthcare IPOs in Hong Kong in recent years.