Glasgow-based digital chemistry company Chemify has secured £22m of public funding towards an £89.9m expansion that it says will create up to 300 highly skilled jobs over the next three years.
Scottish Enterprise, Scotland’s national economic development agency, is contributing £16m, with £6m coming from the UK Government through the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade. Chemify is putting in the remaining £67.9m.
The expansion will take Chemify’s Scottish workforce from 152 employees to around 450, and safeguard a further 100 jobs, according to the announcement.
New headquarters in Govan
As part of the project, Chemify will set up its new global headquarters and research and development centre at the University of Glasgow’s Health Innovation Hub in Govan, part of the Glasgow Riverside Innovation District. The company will also expand its automated manufacturing operations in the city.
The move was described in the announcement as a direct example of the UK and Scottish governments supporting high-potential companies to grow, scale and remain in the UK, as committed to in Scotland’s Life Sciences Strategy and the UK Life Sciences Sector Plan. Glasgow’s 87,000 sq ft Health Innovation Hub opened in Govan near the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.
Chemify was founded in 2019 as a spinout from the University of Glasgow, with initial backing from Innovate UK’s Innovation Accelerator programme. It has developed technology combining robotics and AI that automates the design, manufacture and testing of new chemical compounds for the pharmaceutical and advanced materials industries.
The company said the technology has the potential to help researchers develop new treatments and advanced materials more quickly and at lower cost. The project will also establish Chemify as what it calls the first Chemistry Hyperscaler, increasing its capacity to design and make new compounds for partners and to scale its technology globally.
Professor Lee Cronin, founder and chief executive of Chemify, said: “Just one year ago, our first Chemifarm in Glasgow proved that Chemputation works by grounding AI-enabled drug discovery in physical synthesis and improving the design and makeability of new molecules and materials.
“The additional funding will enable us to hyperscale chemistry, expand our next-generation Chemifarm and advance our Chemify Genesis system to vastly increase our capacity to create new molecules, materials and medicines and bespoke datasets.”
Government and agency backing
Adrian Gillespie, chief executive of Scottish Enterprise, which has supported Chemify since 2023, said: “Chemify’s investment is a powerful vote of confidence in Scotland as a place to scale innovative deep-tech businesses. It will accelerate the company’s growth and create exciting opportunities across chemistry, advanced manufacturing and life sciences sectors.”
He added: “By backing ambitious, scaling businesses like Chemify, we’re helping world-leading Scottish science make a bigger impact globally.”
Science Minister Chris McDonald said: “Chemify is changing the way that drugs are discovered by using artificial intelligence and robotics.” He said the government’s industrial strategy was helping companies like Chemify “to start here in the UK, grow here and stay here”, adding: “It is a big change from the past when many of our world leading science discoveries were commercialised overseas.”
Business Matters has previously reported that spinouts outside the Golden Triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and London face a disadvantage in raising venture capital.
McDonald said: “We are aiming to have the third biggest life sciences industry in the world, and the biggest in Europe by 2035.”
tephen Flynn, Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Tourism and Transport, said: “This significant investment and creation of up to 300 highly skilled jobs at Chemify in Glasgow is a major boost for our economy and will help grow one of Scotland’s most important and dynamic sectors.”
Flynn said supporting companies such as Chemify would help deliver the ambitions of Scotland’s Life Sciences Strategy, “including growing the sector’s contribution to £25 billion by 2035.”
The project builds on the launch of Chemify’s automated manufacturing facility in Glasgow, the company said.
