Apheris strengthens board with Exscientia co-founder Dr. Richard Bickerton

Richard joins at a pivotal moment as Apheris expands its biopharma networks and connecting some of the largest molecular datasets in the industry. Today’s AI models are inherently limited by the data available in public repositories that lack the scale and diversity needed for robust drug discovery. Fixing this requires deep expertise across science, technology, and AI.

As a co-founder of Exscientia, Dr. Bickerton played a central role in building their AI-first discovery platform, work that led to the company’s acquisition by Recursion in the largest techbio merger to date. Richard’s background spans cheminformatics, data science and building ML systems at scale for real-world drug discovery. Areas central to Apheris’ mission.

“We are seeing AI models in drug discovery becoming increasingly commoditized. The real differentiator is access to high-quality, diverse data, ” said Dr. Bickerton. “The sheer scale and diversity of chemical space means that many models still struggle with applicability and accuracy. Apheris is changing that, making it possible to unlock valuable, industrial discovery data while preserving privacy and IP. The potential for impact across the industry is enormous, and I look forward to contributing to it.”

Apheris CEO Robin Röhm added: “I couldn’t be more excited to add Richard to our Board. His experience as a founder, builder, and scientific thinker is highly relevant for where we are heading. His contributions will help guide us as we build the infrastructure and partnerships needed to enable secure, large-scale collaborations in drug discovery.”

Apheris is part of eCAPITAL’s Cybersecurity portfolio, with a focus on secure data collaboration and AI in life sciences. Robin and team aim to solve some of the toughest infrastructure problems in drug discovery, where foundational models need access to large-scale discovery data in a privacy and IP-preserving manner.  To learn more about Apheris and their privacy-preserving data platform, visit apheris.com.