U.K.-based artificial intelligence company BenevolentAI Ltd. today announced the completion of a $115 million funding round that values the London startup at a cool $2 billion.

The round, said to be one of the largest ever in the AI pharmaceutical sector, was led by BevenolentAI’s existing backers in the U.S., including Woodford Investment Management.

BenevolentAI is using AI to try and develop medicines for hard to treat diseases. The company believes its use of AI helps to the reduce costs and failure rates seen in traditional drug development.

To get an idea of how that works, imagine a pharmaceutical company that’s looking to develop new drugs for a particular disease. That company traditionally starts by trying to understand how the disease attacks the human body. With this understanding the company can then try to design drugs that can stop the disease, or at least limit the damage it does.

The problem is that this is a time-consuming process involving hundreds of lab hours, and there’s a great deal of uncertainty about if the new drugs will work when tested on animals. In addition, most scientists have a very specialized knowledge of the disease in question, which can influence their thinking on the problem.

BenevolentAI’s technology tries to amplify that knowledge in order to come up with more experimental drug possibilities, and it does so faster than human scientists can do. Indeed, the company claims to be able to cut early stage drug discovery by four years and potentially deliver efficiencies in the entire drug development process of 60 percent against pharmaceutical industry averages.

The company isn’t alone in pursuing AI technology to facilitate the hunt for new medicines. Just last month a company called Atomwise Inc. announced an early-stage $45 million funding round to build out its AtomNet neural network, which uses deep learning to simulate the creation of new drug molecules.

BenevolentAI is a bit more focused than its rival however, working to develop treatments for specific diseases that attack the nervous system, such as Motor Neuron Disease and Parkinson’s Disease. It’s planning to use the new funds to ramp up drug development in these areas.

In addition, BenevolentAI also wants to further the development of its self-learning system, with an eye towards expansion into other industries such as agriculture and energy storage.

The round “reflects the rapidly growing global interest in the emerging AI pharmaceutical sector and a recognition of our place as the dominant player within it,” Mulvany said.

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