Germany's BioNTech to acquire British AI startup InstaDeep

(Reuters) -Biontech SE said on Tuesday it would buy the rest of British artificial intelligence startup InstaDeep that it does not already own for an upfront payment of roughly 362 million euros ($388 million) to bolster its drug development.

The German vaccine maker intends to use AI tech to speed up drug discovery and development of next-generation immunotherapies and vaccines.

InstaDeep shareholders will also be eligible to receive additional performance-based milestone payments of up to 200 million euros.

BioNTech said last year it developed a method to quickly determine whether a new virus variant is a cause for concern, collaborating with InstaDeep Ltd.

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(Reporting by Pratik Jain; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Shailesh Kuber)