Shanghai biotech Nutshell Therapeutics has closed a Series C1 round in the tens of millions of dollars to scale its AI-driven allosteric drug discovery platform, the company said on September 15, 2026. The round was led by Trustbridge Capital with Decheng Capital as a lead co-investor, valuing continued expansion of a small-molecule pipeline that spans oncology, immunology and central-nervous-system indications.
Betting on protein motion, not just structure
Founded in 2020 by chief executive Qiancheng Shen and chief technology officer Zhengtian Yu, Nutshell targets the fastest-growing seam of AI drug discovery: allosteric binding sites that sit away from a protein's active pocket and are difficult to hit with structure-only design. The company's platform combines machine learning with physics-based molecular dynamics to model how proteins flex and expose transient pockets, then screens candidate small molecules against those states.
Why now
Chinese biotech has become one of the most active markets for AI drug discovery capital this year, a trend that also produced Tandem Health's $100M Series B in Europe and continued growth for the sector's China-based operators. Nutshell says the fresh round will extend a preclinical pipeline that includes selective inhibitors against notoriously undruggable oncology and immunology targets, and expand its computational and wet-lab teams in Shanghai.
The pipeline
The company has previously disclosed programmes in oncology and CNS indications, and its Series C1 documentation points at further capital dedicated to scaling its allosteric platform, including deeper integration between molecular dynamics simulations and machine-learning-based binding-site discovery. It joins a Sept. 15 funding cohort that also includes ENCOS, Yincheng Intelligence and EUCLYD.
Reporting based on coverage from Tech Startups and China Money Network.