A Glasgow-based scientific software company has signalled expansion plans that include the acquisition of a German chemical software company.
DeepMatter, which employs 18 people and has strong links to Glasgow University, has announced that it intends to acquire Infochem GmbH for approximately €2m and raise at least £3m from investors to fund its ongoing growth.
The funds will be used to expand the team in Glasgow by around a third, adding further software developers and data scientists as well as provide working capital.
Infochem’s software will be integrated into DeepMatter’s cloud platform, accelerating its development and bringing it closer to commercial launch.
DeepMatter, which is listed on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange, has developed DigitalGlassware, an AI-enabled cloud-based software and hardware platform, allowing chemistry experiments to be accurately and systematically recorded, coded and entered into a shared data cloud.
The platform enables chemists to share details of experiments from anywhere in the world and in real-time, so that work is not needlessly duplicated, time and money wasted, and ultimately so new discoveries may be made faster, the company said.
The DigitalGlassware platform is now in use at seven pioneer partners, across three continents.
To date, across the pioneer programme, the DigitalGlassware platform has been used to collect data from over 650 days - 1.8 years - of chemistry across over 700 individual experimental runs.
Data has been collected and structured, comprising nearly 3.7 billion sensor readings over 90 million samples.
Mark Warne, DeepMatter chief executive, said: "Our aim is to integrate chemistry with technology, thereby enabling a greater use of machine learning and artificial intelligence and reaching a point where chemicals can be autonomously synthesised through robotics.
"The acquisition of Infochem will accelerate our strategy, bringing additional expertise, software tools and an existing sales channel, strengthening and accelerating the commercialisation of our platform.
"We look forward to being able to welcome the Infochem team to the enlarged group and look to the future with confidence."
Infochem, which is based in Munich, German with 25 employees, is owned by Springer-Verlag GmbH, part of the Springer Nature.sells chemical data management software to some of the world’s largest pharmaceuticals companies, including Astrazeneca and BASF.
With around €0.48 million of cash on Infochem’s balance sheet, the acquisition will be a net cash positive deal for DeepMatter.
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