{"id":11156,"date":"2025-09-26T14:10:35","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T18:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.startupecosystem.ca\/news\/variational-secures-major-deal-with-merck-for-ai-drug-discovery\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T14:10:35","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T18:10:35","slug":"variational-secures-major-deal-with-merck-for-ai-drug-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupecosystem.ca\/news\/variational-secures-major-deal-with-merck-for-ai-drug-discovery\/","title":{"rendered":"Variational Secures Major Deal with Merck for AI Drug Discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Vancouver-based startup Variational, founded in 2019 by former D-Wave employees Handol Kim, Jason Rolfe, and Ali Saberali, has announced a significant partnership with pharmaceutical giant Merck. This nine-figure deal will involve Variational utilizing its AI platform to generate molecular candidates for therapeutic targets, marking a notable achievement in the field of AI-driven drug discovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vancouver-based startup Variational, founded in 2019 by former D-Wave employees Handol Kim, Jason Rolfe, and Ali Saberali, has announced a significant partnership with pharmaceutical giant Merck. This nine-figure deal will&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1434],"tags":[2346,413,13815,10551,13816],"class_list":["post-11156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-global","tag-ai-drug-discovery","tag-global-startup-news","tag-merck-partnership","tag-pharmaceutical-innovation","tag-variational"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Variational Secures Major Deal with Merck for AI Drug Discovery - Startup Ecosystem Canada<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.startupecosystem.ca\/news\/variational-secures-major-deal-with-merck-for-ai-drug-discovery\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Variational Secures Major Deal with Merck for AI Drug Discovery - Startup Ecosystem Canada\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Vancouver-based startup Variational, founded in 2019 by former D-Wave employees Handol Kim, Jason Rolfe, and Ali Saberali, has announced a significant partnership with pharmaceutical giant Merck. 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