MAINZ, Germany, and LONDON, United Kingdom, January 09, 2023 – BioNTech SE (Nasdaq: BNTX, “BioNTech”) and InstaDeep Ltd. (“InstaDeep”) today announced that they have entered into an agreement under which BioNTech will acquire InstaDeep, a leading global technology company in the field of artificial intelligence (“AI”) and machine learning (“ML”). The transaction includes a total upfront consideration of approximately £362 million in cash and BioNTech shares to acquire 100% of the remaining InstaDeep shares, excluding the shares already owned by BioNTech. In addition, InstaDeep shareholders will be eligible to receive additional performance-based future milestone payments up to approximately £200 million. The transaction follows BioNTech’s initial equity investment as part of InstaDeep’s Series B financing round in January 2022.

The acquisition supports BioNTech’s strategy to build world-leading capabilities in AI-driven drug discovery and development of next-generation immunotherapies and vaccines to address diseases with high unmet medical need. The transaction will combine two organizations with a common culture and is expected to add approximately 240 highly skilled professionals to BioNTech’s workforce, including teams in AI, ML, bioengineering, data science, and software development. Through the acquisition, BioNTech will grow its network of global research collaborators in the field and expand its footprint in key talent hubs across the United States, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. 

With the acquisition of InstaDeep, validated and novel BioNTech-trained AI- and ML-based models are planned to be embedded across BioNTech’s discovery platforms and connected, through InstaDeep’s DeepChain™ platform, to an integrated automated lab infrastructure. This has the objective to enable high-throughput design and testing of novel drug candidates at scale. In addition, BioNTech plans to develop novel AI and ML technology solutions which it aims to apply across key strategic and operational functions.