AI Accelerates Innovation in Bioactive Raw Materials: "Weiming Shiguang" Secures Tens of Millions in Series B+ Round Financing | Exclusive from 36Kr

36Kr learned that "Weiming Shiguang" recently received tens of millions of yuan in Series B+ financing, jointly invested by Huatai GenScript and Haibang Investment. This round of financing will be mainly used to deepen the construction of the AI technology platform, expand the diverse application scenarios of biological materials, and accelerate the global business layout.

After receiving nearly 100 million yuan in investment from L'Oréal and Nice Group in May this year, Weiming Shiguang has once again received support from industrial funds.

Founder Zhao Yaran told 36Kr that at the beginning of Weiming Shiguang's establishment, when building the technology platform, they paid great attention to the innovation of biological materials. They constructed a closed - loop from the design, screening, and efficacy evaluation of bioactive molecules to large - scale production, and fully empowered this synthetic biotechnology platform through AI.

Currently, the specific biological raw material categories developed by Weiming Shiguang mainly include two types: plant callus, such as the newly approved and registered cosmetic raw materials "Epiphyllum callus extract", "Bletilla ochracea callus extract", "Peony callus extract"; bioactive proteins, including recombinant collagen, polypeptides, etc.

Currently, Weiming Shiguang has explored a business model that meets the needs of the beauty, daily chemical, medical device, and food industries. On the one hand, it self - develops innovative raw material pipelines; on the other hand, it uses the CRDMO model (CRO + CDMO) to cooperate with downstream brand owners to develop new biological raw materials and provide OEM production services for new raw materials, combining efficiency and certainty.

AI Engine and Dual - Chassis Cell Factory

In terms of synthetic biological chassis technology, Weiming Shiguang has simultaneously deployed two types of cell factories: microbial and plant. The former mainly produces polypeptide and protein products (such as collagen and fibronectin); the latter can be used to develop a variety of plant raw materials, including rare plant active molecules.

The production efficiency of many complex metabolites unique to plants and related to the photosynthesis system through the microbial chassis is not high. Zhao Yaran introduced that there is a type of callus cell in plants that is totipotent and has strong proliferation, differentiation, and development abilities, which can serve as a "cell factory". Through a small amount of living plant tissue, simulating the natural phenomenon of plant injury, callus cells can be induced, and then the intracellular metabolic network can be regulated to achieve large - scale production of the target substance.

Through the plant callus technology, Weiming Shiguang has induced callus from more than 80 plants, such as Epiphyllum, ancient plum blossoms, century - old peonies, and Bletilla ochracea. Among them, the extracts of 3 types of callus have completed the registration of new cosmetic raw materials, accounting for 75% of the 4 types of new callus raw materials approved by the drug administration. It is understood that the plant callus induced in the laboratory can be redifferentiated to obtain plant clone seedlings, which can be used for the conservation of rare and endangered plants.

Early in the development of the synthetic biotechnology platform, the Weiming Shiguang team realized the powerful capabilities and value of AI. In addition to using tools such as AlphaFold and RFDiffusion to improve R & D efficiency, they also began to build a standardized biological database for multiple species. "On the basis of the existing large biological models, we supplemented a large amount of our own data for retraining to enhance the model's capabilities in specific fields. In the future, AI will become the basic ability of biotechnology companies, and the factor that differentiates capabilities is 'data'."

At the data level, Weiming Shiguang has accumulated high - quality non - public data through cooperation with universities, independent sequencing R & D, and joint development with customers, forming a flywheel effect where more business leads to better data, more accurate models, and more business.

Taking the design of recombinant collagen as an example, AI has significantly improved R & D efficiency: First, all known types of collagen sequences in nature and their functional data are input into the model for enhanced training, allowing AI to understand their structure - activity relationship. Then, combined with the specific needs of downstream application scenarios, such as small molecular weight, strong compatibility, and good stability for smear - type cosmetics, AI is used for targeted design and high - throughput virtual screening to obtain candidate molecules that meet the needs.

"Now, AI has increased our R & D efficiency by at least 5 times," Zhao Yaran said. Next, Weiming Shiguang's R & D expenditure on AI will gradually increase to 50%, focusing on the development of "agents" for multiple specific tasks. In the future, AI virtual cell testing agents and efficacy evaluation agents will also be opened for customers to choose and use.

Develop Differentiated "High - Order" Raw Materials with the CRDMO Model

Product selection is the "soul question" faced by synthetic biology companies. The competitive landscape and market prospects of different products vary greatly. In product selection, Weiming Shiguang learned from the business model of the pharmaceutical industry and gradually explored a "reverse development" approach, starting from the needs of downstream brand - owner customers and providing raw material development services and products in the CRO and CDMO models.

This model has been verified in categories such as plant metabolites, expanding a number of well - known domestic and foreign brand customers, and the number of customers has exceeded that of the collagen category.

On the one hand, the rare plant extracts developed by Weiming Shiguang through the plant callus technology naturally have a sense of scarcity and a good story, which can provide unique market value for downstream brands; on the other hand, the unique active ingredients and metabolite profiles of some rare plants provide the possibility of discovering "super - efficacy ingredients".

In the beauty and personal care industry, many "super - molecules" come from "super - plants", such as asiaticoside from Centella asiatica and boswellic acid from European beech. The development cycle of popular raw materials is very long and requires multiple successes in science and technology, marketing, etc. Through joint development, Weiming Shiguang can obtain timely market feedback in the process of serving brand customers.

At present, its key development direction is new ingredients with high - order efficacy and market differentiation. In the future, if a certain ingredient is verified to have the potential to become a "super - molecule", more investment can be made to promote the penetration of this ingredient into more basic and larger - scale application scenarios.

In the field of proteins, Weiming Shiguang emphasizes starting from science. The types and molecular sizes of collagen applied to different skin layers should be clearly distinguished.

For example, in response to anti - aging and anti - hair loss needs, the team developed Type XVII collagen. The scientific logic is that Type XVII collagen naturally exists at the junction of the epidermis and dermis, and its core function is to maintain the stemness of hair follicle stem cells and remove aging epidermal cells, making it more suitable for the epidermis. To solve the problem of macromolecular transdermal absorption, the Weiming Shiguang team used the AI platform to design functional fragments of 500 - 800Da, and the transdermal absorption ability has been recognized by downstream customers.

According to Zhao Yaran, since its establishment, Weiming Shiguang has built a wide range of market channels and customer networks. As a technology - based startup, the market breakthrough point they found is an efficacy detection technology: "Human Raman spectroscopy detection".

In the beauty and personal care industry, the detection of product efficacy mostly uses in vitro skin, which has problems such as a high false - positive rate. Weiming Shiguang has developed the "in - vivo transdermal absorption Raman spectroscopy detection" technology. Through software and hardware innovation, it can intuitively present the transdermal permeability of active ingredients in the human body, attracting many beauty and personal care, and household daily chemical brand customers to use this experimental platform.

Through detection services, a wide range of connections are established with customers, providing a basis for the subsequent expansion of CRDMO services. According to Zhao Yaran, Weiming Shiguang has established joint development cooperation with brands such as L'Oréal, Procter & Gamble, Proya, and Shanghai Jahwa.

In the future, its bioactive raw material business plans to expand from beauty to more market - oriented application directions such as food and daily chemicals; at the same time, it will also actively seek to expand overseas.