Former OpenAI Exec Raises $215 Mn to Build AI-Powered Drug Research Labs
Warp Sciences, a new company started by former leaders from OpenAI, Meta, Terremoto Biosciences and Devoted Health, has raised $215 million to build chemistry research labs in the US. The company uses artificial intelligence (AI) and robots to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies create new medicines.
Warp Sciences will work as a chemistry contract research organisation (CRO). This means other companies can hire it to make and test molecules, which are tiny groups of atoms, as part of their search for new medicines. Warp plans to bring together chemists, AI systems and robots to run experiments faster. These experiments will also produce information that can help improve future research.
Lightspeed led the $215 million funding round. Other investors included Premji Invest, Mayfield, IVP, Lux, Conviction, Menlo Ventures, 01 Advisors and several others. Individual investors also supported the company, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica and Figma CEO Dylan Field.
Warp Sciences was started by four co-founders. Kevin Weil previously worked as Chief Product Officer and Vice-President of Science at OpenAI. Solomon Reisberg held leadership positions in medicinal chemistry at Terremoto Biosciences. Manohar Paluri was a Vice-President at Meta Superintelligence Labs. DJ Patil was one of the first executives at Devoted Health and served as the first US Chief Data Scientist at the White House.
Weil said AI has made software development and mathematics much faster, but it has not yet had the same effect on sciences that study the physical world.
He explained that chemistry and biology improve when scientists create something, test it and learn from what happens. He said that building better AI for science requires collecting large amounts of information from real-world experiments.
Warp will first focus on a process called lead optimisation through analogue synthesis. This means making different versions of a molecule so scientists can compare their properties and find which ones might work best as new medicines.
At Warp, chemists will help plan and guide experiments, while AI and robots will gradually take over more laboratory tasks. The company also wants to train its AI systems using information collected from real experiments. This will create a repeating process in which AI helps design molecules, labs test them, and the results help improve the next round of research.
Warp said it will not create its own collection of drugs to develop. Instead, customers will choose which molecules they want to study and will stay in control of their own drug discovery projects.
Manohar Paluri, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Warp Sciences, said every experiment should help make the next experiment smarter. He explained that connecting the planning, running and analysis of experiments could help AI systems become better at deciding which molecules to make and how to make them.
Warp is launching at a time when people are raising concerns about how much the biotechnology industry depends on research services from other countries.
Warp plans to provide chemistry research services in the US, focusing on faster research, protecting intellectual property and offering competitive prices. Intellectual property includes valuable ideas, discoveries and research that belong to a company. Warp said its US labs would give pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies more control over where their sensitive research is carried out.
Reisberg said he had worked with chemistry research partners in other countries that provided fast services at good prices. However, he was still concerned about keeping the valuable research and ideas behind his projects safe.
He said Warp is being built to give scientists developing drugs the same high-quality chemistry services in the US. The company wants to make protecting customers' intellectual property a central part of its work, without charging the higher prices that smaller specialist US contract research organisations currently ask for.
Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer DJ Patil said Warp will help customers discover and develop drugs instead of making its own medicines.
Patil explained that Warp is not trying to develop drugs itself. Instead, it is building the labs, technology and other tools needed by the companies and scientists who develop them.