Pharmacelera
Pharmacelera develops proprietary Computer-Aided Drug Design software combining Quantum-Mechanics and Machine Learning to explore ultra-large chemical spaces, licensing its QaiM, PharmScreen, exaScreen, and PharmQSAR platforms and delivering drug discovery services to big pharma, biotechs, research institutions, and CROs.
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2015
- HeadquartersBarcelona, Spain
- Headcount11–50
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
What Pharmacelera does
Pharmacelera is a Barcelona-based deep-technology company, founded in 2015, that develops proprietary Computer-Aided Drug Design (CADD) software combining Quantum-Mechanics (QM) algorithms, Machine Learning, and High-Performance Computing to explore ultra-large chemical spaces for small-molecule drug discovery. Its product portfolio centers on the QaiM platform and includes PharmScreen (field-based virtual screening using 3D QM molecular field descriptors), exaScreen (ultra-large library screening reportedly exploring 70 billion compounds in under 7 hours using less than 6 GB of storage), exaDock (structure-based ultra-large library screening), and PharmQSAR (3D QSAR statistical modeling). The company also operates a drug discovery services business covering target-to-hit, hit-to-lead, and lead optimization.
Pharmacelera monetizes through two streams: annual software licensing for its platforms and project-based drug discovery services. It targets four customer segments — big pharma R&D departments (three are repeat enterprise customers), small biotech companies (the bulk of case studies, including Wren Therapeutics, Macrophage Pharma, Sibylla Biotech, and Sanifit Laboratoris), public research institutions, and contract research organizations. Distribution is direct enterprise field sales, with a recent U.S. beachhead established in Boston, Massachusetts alongside the Barcelona headquarters at the Barcelona Science Park.
The company has completed over 100 projects and has been expanding its addressable chemical space via integrations with Enamine, eMolecules, Chemspace (Freedom Space 5.0, 296 billion compounds), and XtalPi (VAST library), while pursuing strategic collaborations such as with Domainex (transmembrane proteins, GPCRs, ion channels) and UMass Chan Medical School. It closed a €6 million Series A in February 2026 led by Heran Partners, with co-investors Clave Capital, Inveready, and Bio&Tech Smart Capital, and appointed Dr. Cynthia White Tingle as Head of U.S. Operations. Earlier capital includes a €626,360 CDTI/FEDER grant for the EXASCREEN project (2023) and a strategic alliance with venture builder General Inception.
Pharmacelera firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Pharmacelera
- Legal name
- PHARMACELERA S.L.
- Website
- https://pharmacelera.com
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2015
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 11–50 employees
- Short description
- Pharmacelera develops proprietary Computer-Aided Drug Design software combining Quantum-Mechanics and Machine Learning to explore ultra-large chemical spaces, licensing its QaiM, PharmScreen, exaScreen, and PharmQSAR platforms and delivering drug discovery services to big pharma, biotechs, research institutions, and CROs.
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Pharmacelera industry classification
Industry- Product category
- Computational Drug Discovery Software
- NAICS
- Software Publishers (5132)
- akta.pro primary industry
- AI/ML Platforms for Drug Discovery & Experiment Optimization (HLAGAJAO)
Keywords
Where Pharmacelera is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Barcelona
- HQ country
- Spain
- HQ region
- Europe
Offices2 records
Markets served
Pharmacelera business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Personnel, Technology or R&D, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales, Operations
Revenue model
- Software Licensing: Yearly software licenses providing access to cutting-edge technology for HitId, H2L and Lead Optimization stages of drug discovery.
- AI-Driven Drug Discovery Services: Project-based drug discovery services spanning the entire small-molecule pipeline, offering end-to-end solutions from target-to-hit through lead optimization.
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels2 records
Marketing channels6 records
Pharmacelera product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Pharmacelera develops and licenses proprietary Computer-Aided Drug Design software — PharmScreen, exaScreen, PharmQSAR, and the underlying QaiM platform — that combines Quantum-Mechanics molecular descriptors with Machine Learning and High-Performance Computing to screen ultra-large chemical libraries and design novel small-molecule candidates. The company also sells project-based computational drug discovery services covering hit identification, hit-to-lead, and lead optimization for pharmaceutical and biotech customers.
Product overview
Pharmacelera is a deep tech company that develops proprietary Computer-Aided Drug Design (CADD) software based on accurate Quantum-Mechanics algorithms, Machine Learning, and High-Performance Computing (HPC). The company's product portfolio centers on its QaiM platform and comprises three core software products: PharmScreen® for field-based virtual screening of standard compound libraries, exaScreen® for ultra-large chemical space exploration (70+ billion compounds) using advanced 3D molecular field descriptors, and PharmQSAR® for 3D QSAR modeling to support lead optimization. The exaDock methodology extends structure-based virtual screening capabilities to ultra-large libraries. Pharmacelera also offers contract research services covering the full drug discovery pipeline from Target-to-Hit through Lead Optimization, serving pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, research institutions, and CROs.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- QaiM: Proprietary Quantum Mechanics and Artificial Intelligence algorithms platform for drug discovery, combining physics-based algorithms with machine learning to explore the exaSpace chemical universe.
- PharmScreen
- exaScreen
- PharmQSAR
Products and services
- PharmScreen Field-based virtual screening software that uses 3D molecular field descriptors derived from semi-empirical Quantum-Mechanics calculations to find candidate molecules with larger chemical diversity from proprietary, public, or commercial compound libraries. Used by pharma and biotech computational and medicinal chemists for hit identification.
- exaScreen Ultra-large virtual screening software combining AI and Quantum-Mechanics algorithms to explore synthesizable chemical libraries containing tens of billions of compounds in a few hours, surfacing novel and diverse hits in uncharted chemical spaces. Screens 70 billion compounds in under 7 hours using under 6 GB of storage.
- PharmQSAR 3D Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship software package that builds statistical models (CoMFA, CoMSIA, and HyPhar) from experimental assay data to predict pharmacological properties and support lead optimization in drug discovery programs.
- exaDock Structure-based virtual screening method for ultra-large libraries that exploits restrained docking to explore hybrid compounds (fragment reference plus synthon), identifying optimal synthon-based compounds with 50,000 times lower computational cost than brute-force methods.
- Drug Discovery Services Project-based computational chemistry services covering Target-to-Hit, Hit-to-Lead, and Lead Optimization stages, delivered by an in-house team of medicinal and computational chemists, bioinformaticians, pharmacists, and engineers using Pharmacelera's proprietary PharmScreen, exaScreen, and PharmQSAR software. Targets small biotechs, big pharma R&D departments, public research institutions, and CROs.
Quantifiable outcome
- Molecules up to 10 times better than traditional AI-led approaches
- +4 more outcomes
Companies that use Pharmacelera
Customer profileNamed customers7 records
Segments4 records
Ideal customer profiles3 records
Pharmacelera technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- No
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration3 records
AI capability4 records
Feature6 records
Pharmacelera partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Nine partnerships are on record, tiered major, core and minor.
- XtalPimajorIntegration of XtalPi's VAST library with Pharmacelera's exaScreen platform. Provides researchers with unprecedented access to synthetically tractable chemical space combined with cutting-edge 3D computational methods for hit and lead discovery.
- ChemspacemajorIntegration of Chemspace's Freedom Space 5.0 (296 billion chemically diverse, synthesizable compounds) with Pharmacelera's exaScreen virtual screening platform. Enables researchers to conduct ultra-large virtual screening across chemically tractable space using 3D Quantum-Mechanics and Machine Learning algorithms.
- eMoleculesmajorIntegrated solution combining ExaScreen with eMolecules' eXplore/Synple library. Delivers streamlined path from virtual screening to physical compounds, accelerating early-stage drug discovery.
- DomainexmajorStrategic collaboration combining Domainex's Polymer Lipid Particle (PoLiPa) and Direct-to-Biology (D2B) platforms with Pharmacelera's exaScreen and PharmScreen for transmembrane protein drug discovery targeting GPCRs and ion channels.
- UMass Chan Medical SchoolmajorCollaboration supporting early-stage drug discovery projects targeting different families of targets, with focus on enhancing hit identification, lead optimization, and chemical space exploration for cancer and ALS.
- General Inception (GI)coreStrategic alliance signed in 2023 where Pharmacelera became General Inception's AI drug discovery strategic partner. GI's Chief Scientific Officer Venkat Reddy sits on Pharmacelera's Board of Directors. Pharmacelera's technology has strengthened the intellectual property of several of GI's portfolio companies.
- Universitat de BarcelonaminorAcademic collaboration with the University of Barcelona.
- MODSIM Pharma ABminorCollaboration on CCR2 project for identification of bio-active entities targeting CCR2 using virtual screening, quantum mechanics calculations, and free energy perturbation methods.
- Leiden University's LACDRminorCollaboration on CCR2 project for identification of bio-active entities targeting CCR2 using virtual screening, quantum mechanics calculations, and free energy perturbation methods.
Scale indicators3 records
Recent moves8 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Pharmacelera competitors and assessment
Company assessmentBroad incumbents
- Schrödinger: Public, physics-based computational chemistry platform combining QM/molecular dynamics with ML for drug discovery and materials science. Significantly larger and broader portfolio but overlaps directly with Pharmacelera's QaiM/PharmScreen/PharmQSAR positioning in physics-grounded small-molecule design.
- Recursion: Public techbio combining high-throughput biology, imaging and ML for drug discovery. Broader and more capital-intensive than Pharmacelera but overlapping in the use of AI/ML and large-scale data to accelerate early-stage discovery.
Direct peers
- Insilico Medicine: AI-driven drug discovery company combining generative chemistry, target discovery and clinical development. Directly comparable to Pharmacelera in using AI/ML for novel small-molecule generation and ultra-large chemical space exploration.
- Atomwise: AI drug discovery company using structure-based virtual screening and ML to evaluate ultra-large compound libraries for hit identification. Highly comparable to Pharmacelera's exaScreen approach of mining billions of compounds with physics-informed scoring.
- Iambic: AI/ML drug discovery company (formerly Entos) combining physics-based models with ML for small-molecule design and development. Direct peer to Pharmacelera's QM+AI methodology for novel hit and lead generation.
- Exscientia: AI-driven precision medicine company with a generative drug design platform for small molecules. Comparable to Pharmacelera in applying AI to design and prioritize novel chemical entities, with a more advanced clinical pipeline.
- BenevolentAI: AI drug discovery company applying ML to biomedical knowledge graphs and small-molecule design. Comparable to Pharmacelera's AI-enabled approach to identifying novel targets and chemical starting points.
- Optibrium: Computational chemistry software company offering drug design and ADMET prediction tools (e.g., StarDrop). Direct overlap with Pharmacelera's PharmQSAR and PharmScreen in computational small-molecule design and lead optimization for pharma R&D.
- Cresset: Computational chemistry software and services company specializing in 3D molecular field-based methods and ligand-based design. Closely aligned with Pharmacelera's field-based virtual screening (PharmScreen) and 3D QSAR (PharmQSAR) approach.
Emerging players
- XtalPi: AI + robotics drug discovery company combining quantum physics, ML and automated synthesis. Direct technical overlap with Pharmacelera and an existing integration partner (VAST library + exaScreen), placing it as both peer and collaborator.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat5 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Pharmacelera social profiles
Digital presencePharmacelera financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Pharmacelera leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles4 records
Pharmacelera funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds5 records
Investors6 records
Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Pharmacelera M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Pharmacelera
What does Pharmacelera do?
Pharmacelera develops and licenses proprietary Computer-Aided Drug Design software — PharmScreen, exaScreen, PharmQSAR, and the underlying QaiM platform — that combines Quantum-Mechanics molecular descriptors with Machine Learning and High-Performance Computing to screen ultra-large chemical libraries and design novel small-molecule candidates. The company also sells project-based computational drug discovery services covering hit identification, hit-to-lead, and lead optimization for pharmaceutical and biotech customers.
Is Pharmacelera a public or private company?
Pharmacelera is a private company. It is classified as venture growth investor backed and is currently operating.
When was Pharmacelera founded?
Pharmacelera was founded in 2015. It employs 11 to 50 people.
Where is Pharmacelera based?
Pharmacelera is headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, in the Europe region.
How does Pharmacelera make money?
Two revenue lines are on record. Software Licensing is the primary driver. The others are AI-Driven Drug Discovery Services.
Who are Pharmacelera's main competitors?
Broad incumbents on record are Schrödinger and Recursion. Direct peers are Insilico Medicine, Atomwise, Iambic, Exscientia, BenevolentAI, Optibrium and Cresset. XtalPi is listed as an emerging player.
Does Pharmacelera have an API?
No public API is recorded for Pharmacelera.
What industry is Pharmacelera in?
Pharmacelera's product category is Computational Drug Discovery Software. Its primary akta.pro industry code is HLAGAJAO, AI/ML Platforms for Drug Discovery & Experiment Optimization. Its NAICS code is 5132.