SandboxAQ Announces More Than $300 Million of Funding to Drive Next Era of AI

Insider Brief

• SandboxAQ secured over $300 million in funding at a $5.3 billion valuation to accelerate the development of its Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) and AI-driven technologies across healthcare, materials science, navigation, and cybersecurity.
• The company’s innovations include 15x faster drug design with AQBioSim, 95% faster lithium-ion battery life predictions with AQChemSim, and GPS-free navigation milestones with AQNav, solidifying its leadership in solving complex computational challenges.
• Backed by prominent investors and leaders like Eric Schmidt, Jim Breyer, and Yann LeCun, SandboxAQ’s LQMs are positioned to transform industries by complementing traditional AI models like LLMs to tackle real-world scientific and business problems at scale.

PRESS RELEASE — – SandboxAQ today announced a round of more than $300 million from Fred Alger Management, LLC, T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., Mumtalakat, Parkway Venture Capital, Breyer Capital, Rizvi Traverse, S32, US Innovative Technology Fund, Ava Investments, Eric Schmidt, Marc Benioff, David Siegel, Yann LeCun, IQT, and other prominent investors. The funding round valued the company at $5.3 billion on a pre-money basis. 

The company raised new funding to accelerate the development of its Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) and other AI applications in drug discovery, materials science, chemistry, cybersecurity, navigation, and medical devices.   

“Large Quantitative Models are the next wave of AI as they provide a powerful ability to solve science and business problems for large industries including aerospace, biopharma, chemicals, defense, energy, finance, and more. The capital raise we are announcing today gives us additional resources to drive deep impact at scale,” said Jack D. Hidary, CEO of SandboxAQ. “LLMs and LQMs are complementary platforms that are both needed in the world of B2B applications. We are pleased to see the commitment of so many long-term investors in SandboxAQ.”

“Leading global enterprises are realizing that they must look beyond the capabilities and limitations of LLMs and embrace LQMs in order to maximize the ROI from their AI investments,” said Eric Schmidt, Chairman of SandboxAQ. “Jack Hidary and his team at SandboxAQ have shown the ability to create significant customer value across key industries such as biopharma, chemicals, and financial services. Jack is a world-class, high-integrity CEO leading a deeply technical team. With this round, SandboxAQ can move even faster to its goals and impact.”

“We see significant growth potential and opportunity for LQMs across a broad range of industries, which is why investing in SandboxAQ is an investment in AI’s future,” said Jim Breyer, Breyer Capital. “Through SandboxAQ, Breyer Capital has a front-row seat to a generation-defining company with some of the most inspiring uses of AI technology. Jack is both a visionary and a high-performance CEO, uniting science and AI in bold and meaningful ways to address the world’s most pressing challenges.”

“I am investing in SandboxAQ because of their industry-leading approach to quantitative AI, said Yann LeCun, a leading AI scientist and one of three Turing Award winners for deep learning. “While LLMs are very helpful tools for consumers, it is quantitative AI that will define work in large sectors of the economy including biopharma, chemicals and financial services. I am impressed by the technical depth of Jack and his team and am excited to support their work. SandboxAQ has emerged as a leader in novel applications of AI that solve the most pressing challenges in the world and their technical success is impressive.”

Customers Across Industries and High-Impact Research Output

SandboxAQ is completing 2024 with achievements that underscore its leadership in AI-driven innovation and scientific research. SandboxAQ’s Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) and other technologies have set a new standard in AI, tackling computationally complex challenges in healthcare, energy, chemicals, aerospace, defense, and other industries. 

Advancing Drug Discovery with AQBioSim

SandboxAQ’s AQBioSim division made significant strides in accelerating new therapeutic approaches for neurodegenerative diseases in 2024, signing deals to leverage its AI capabilities with two top academic research institutions.

SandboxAQ also expanded its relationship with large biopharma companies, leveraging LQMs to identify new biomarkers and optimize clinical development for investigational medicines. It launched a new generative AI application, IDOLPro, which can rapidly design drug molecules with specific properties to accelerate further drug discovery R&D. Several leading organizations joined SandboxAQ’s innovation network, extending AQBioSim’s cutting-edge AI-driven drug discovery.

Innovating Materials Science with AQChemSim

SandboxAQ’s AQChemSim division achieved significantly upgraded capabilities in material design, breaking new ground with customers and partners. Through its ongoing collaboration with NVIDIA, SandboxAQ boosted its computational chemistry capabilities by 80x and doubled the size of molecules the platform can calculate. Leveraging high-quality battery data from NOVONIX, AQChemSim reduced lithium-ion battery life prediction time by 95%, increasing accuracy 35x with 50x less data. In addition, SandboxAQ advanced battery design and testing. SandboxAQ software helped a global chemical manufacturer quantitatively predict catalytic activity to help it produce more advanced chemicals.

Revolutionizing Cardiac Diagnostics with CardiAQ

SandboxAQ launched its AQMed division. The first product, CardiAQ, is a magnetocardiography (MCG) investigational device under development designed to capture and analyze magnetic signals from the heart, with the potential to provide more precise and timely assessments. The company also announced a new clinical research study with The Mayo Clinic, supplementing its ongoing collaboration with Mount Sinai Medical Center and a successful feasibility study with the UCSF Medical Center.

Transforming Navigation with AQNav

SandboxAQ’s AQNav successfully gained traction with aerospace leaders to further explore its applications. The AQNav system uses quantum sensors to detect the Earth’s magnetic field and feeds that info to a quantitative model which compares the data to magnetic maps of the Earth to determine location. AQNav achieved new milestones with the U.S. Air Force (USAF), advancing navigation of aircraft without GPS. This milestone led to a US Air Force TACFI contract extension to explore additional AQNav configurations for a wider range of aircraft. SandboxAQ was named to TIME’s Best Inventions of 2024, Fast Company’s Next Big Things in Tech, AI Trailblazers, and other awards.

Securing Digital Infrastructure with AQtive Guard

In 2024, SandboxAQ expanded its Accenture partnership to deploy its cryptography management solution, AQtive Guard, across verticals such as financial servicesand life sciences.

J.P. Morgan advised SandboxAQ on the financing.