AI Drug Discovery Startup raised nearly $30 million in a new seed round
Chai Discovery, an artificial intelligence biology startup founded six months ago, has raised nearly $30 million from heavyweights Thrive Capital and OpenAI to bring AI to drug discovery.
The startup’s foundation model seeks to rival Google DeepMind
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Chai Discovery, an AI biology startup founded six months ago, has raised nearly $30 million from heavyweights Thrive Capital and OpenAI to bring AI to drug discovery.#startup #ai #biotech #openai https://t.co/EJIiD8K8sY
— The_Journalbiz (@the_journalbiz) September 9, 2024
Chai Discovery news tweet
Chai develops AI foundation models that can predict the structure of biochemical molecules and reprogram how they interact, a process that is central to developing new medications. “We want to turn biology from a science into engineering,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Joshua Meier.
- The company’s new seed round was led by Thrive and also included Dimension Capital. The deal values Chai at $150 million, it said.
In recent years, there has been significant excitement about the potential for AI to speed up drug discovery. In 2022, Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold tool dazzled the scientific world with its ability to predict the structure of millions of proteins.
Venture capitalists poured nearly $30 billion into biopharma startups in 2023, according to PitchBook. For Chai, the competition isn’t just coming from fellow AI startups but juggernauts like Google, which is eyeing a business that its AI chief, Demis Hassabis, says could be worth north of $100 billion.
