Insilico Medicine on Tuesday announced that it has entered a research collaboration with Pfizer, which Insilico CEO Alex Zhavoronkov says has "one of the most advanced AI teams internally both in target identification and chemistry." Under the agreement, Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) will use Insilico's machine learning technology and proprietary Pandomics Discovery Platform. Pfizer, not new to applying such advanced analytics, also has worked with IBM Watson and Concerto HealthAI. "We will use our generative biology platform to attempt the discovery of new previously invisible biological targets implicated in specific diseases," Zhavoronkov tells Xconomy, though specific disease targets were not disclosed. Financial terms of the partnership were also not disclosed.

In startup world these days, the word "biotech" is increasingly accompanied by "computational" and two, two-letter initialisms: AI and ML. Those tools--artificial intelligence and machine learning, respectively--have been around for decades, but in recent years have become faster and cheaper, accelerating their use by those in the business of discovering and developing new drugs. Another startup looking to take advantage of those improvements, South San Francisco-based Genesis Therapeutics, has scored $4.1 million in seed funding and publicly joined the growing fray of biotechs with grand ambitions of disrupting the slow, costly process of discovering and developing new medicines. Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, led its seed round, one of a handful of seed-stage investments it has made in biotech. Felicis Ventures, another VC firm based in Silicon Valley, also invested.

There's a time in a self-driving car company's life where a minivan is just more sensible than a sleek, European city car. NuTonomy, the autonomous vehicle startup spun out of MIT that's putting its systems through their paces on the streets of South Boston, says it has "decommissioned" its fleet of five-door, "supermini" electric cars manufactured by French automaker Renault under the brand name Zoe, according to a quarterly update the startup filed with the city of Boston. NuTonomy has been testing the vehicles on the city streets since January 2017. "The Zoe vehicle platform, with significant customizations, has performed all of our autonomous testing in Boston to date," the company writes. "However, as our engineering and design teams evaluated the technology requirements and customer needs in a fully autonomous vehicle, it became clear that the Zoe could not meet all of the criteria."

John Halamka thinks the digital health industry is still "emerging." But it has come a long way and is starting to deliver after years of hype. Halamka, a Boston-based physician and healthcare technology expert, says that's thanks to several coalescing factors: improved technology, more favorable financial incentives for using digital products in healthcare, and growing demand from patients accustomed to tech-enabled convenience in other areas of their lives. "In 2019, the tech is better, but also the alignment of incentives is better," says Halamka, who leads innovation at Beth Israel Lahey Health system and is a Harvard Medical School professor. Over his 30-year career in medicine, Halamka has had a front row seat to advances in healthcare technology, and at times has helped drive them.

The capabilities of artificial intelligence technologies have increased significantly in the past decade, but there's a growing sense that new breakthroughs are needed for the field to continue delivering on its promise. David Cox and his colleagues have dedicated themselves to identifying and breaking down "the fundamental core barriers" to advancing A.I., he says. In February 2018, IBM (NYSE: IBM) hired Cox--then a Harvard University associate professor--to direct its efforts in a new, joint A.I. research lab with MIT. For its part, IBM is investing $240 million over 10 years into the "MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab." Xconomy recently checked in with Cox (pictured above) to see how the first year went. That's not a lot of time, especially considering the lab's ambitious goals, but Cox sounds happy with the progress made thus far.

Boston startup DataRobot wrapped up a new $100 million funding round, injecting more cash into what was already one of the region's biggest bets on machine learning and artificial intelligence. Palo Alto, CA-based venture firms Meritech and Sapphire Ventures led the Series D investment, with DFJ Growth, New Enterprise Associates, and IA Ventures also participating in the deal, DataRobot said in an e-mail to Xconomy. DataRobot said the additional backing puts the company's total venture funding at $225 million. Started in 2012, the company aims to automate much of the work of data scientists and make building predictive models easier for business users. Applications range from the expected--banks running risk algorithms to determine whether to issue a loan or a hospital determining risk for diabetes or heart disease--to the surprising, like helping the New York Mets choose draft picks.

More than a hundred startup teams are beginning a training and mentoring program this month at the Berkeley SkyDeck Accelerator--the largest group ever accepted to the UC Berkeley program since it was founded in 2012. Aside from the funding, free office rent, and other resources offered by the startup accelerator located near the edge of the Berkeley campus, the program is also setting an example for its young companies--as an organization going all out for growth. SkyDeck, originally launched as free office space where startups could roost and benefit from the advice of mentors from the university community, now partners with an affiliated venture capital firm, Berkeley SkyDeck Fund, which invests $100,000 in each company entering the program's formal six-month session as a "Cohort" member. That's comparable to the $120,000 invested in each startup nurtured by the influential Silicon Valley accelerator program Y Combinator. For the fall session, 22 Cohort startups were chosen, and an additional 80 teams were admitted as "HotDesk" members who can attend workshops, consult mentors, use office desks as available, and prepare for their company's next stage.

Fridays can be the most productive work day, as you look to shore up everything before the weekend starts. Or, maybe instead, it's a day filled with long lunches and listless Internet surfing, as you seek out all the interesting articles you missed during the week. Fear not: Xconomy has done the work for you, bringing a smattering of some of the most interesting reads out there. From Facebook to Microsoft to the NIH, organizations keep working to push forward the uses of A.I. Is There a Smarter Path to Artificial Intelligence? Some Experts Hope So --The New York Times Wait, you're saying we might have invested too much in deep learning?

A few years before the presidential election of 2016, with all its Wikileaks, Russian disinformation campaigns, and phony Facebook links, San Diego's Mitek Systems (NASDAQ: MITK made a strategic decision to expand into identity verification technology. Funny how things work out. While mobile banking technology still represents 60 percent of Mitek's business, COO Kalle Marsal said Thursday the company's identity verification technology is now its fastest-growing business. After paying $10.6 million in 2015 for IDchecker, a Dutch provider of identity and document authentication technology, and $15 million last October for iCar, a Barcelona-based specialist in digital identity verification software, Mitek recently closed its biggest-ever acquisition--a nearly $51 million deal for A2iA, a French company focused on artificial intelligence and imaging technology. Mitek is a onetime defense contractor that re-invented itself as a technology provider for the banking industry--initially with computer vision technology for handwriting recognition (i.e.

It's time to catch up on recent news from the Boston-area tech sector, including a pair of acquisitions; investments in digital health, artificial intelligence, and wastewater analytics; and scenes from this year's "Star Wars"-themed NEVY Awards. LogoMix CEO and founder Craig Bloem previously co-founded Performable, a Boston-area marketing automation startup sold to HubSpot (NYSE: HUBS) in 2011. Financial terms weren't disclosed, but a spokesperson said Hiptest's 15 employees will be joining SmartBear. Private equity firm Francisco Partners acquired a majority stake in SmartBear last year; a source told Xconomy the deal had an enterprise value of $410 million. SmartBear is currently profitable and generating more than $100 million in annual revenue, the spokesperson said.