SAN FRANCISCO: Chai Discovery, the AI company that predicts and reprograms the interactions between biochemical molecules, today announced its $130 million Series B financing round co-led by Oak HC/FT and General Catalyst. This round of financing values the company at $1.3 billion.

The news comes on the heels of Chai’s most recent announcement1, where the company showed their latest models can now design molecules with important “developability” properties and tackle “hard-to-drug” targets that have historically been challenging for traditional techniques.

The round also comes just months after Chai Discovery announced a $70 million Series A and revealed Chai 2, the first zero-shot generative platform that achieves double digit experimental success rates in de novo antibody design – a 100-fold improvement over previous computational methods.

“We’re standing on the precipice of a new era for the biopharmaceutical industry,” said Josh Meier, co-founder and CEO of Chai Discovery. “We’re in awe of the rate of progress on the models – what looked like five-year problems just months ago are now getting solved in weeks. Our latest models can design molecules that have properties we’d want from actual drugs, and tackle challenging targets that have been out of reach. These models will unleash a new wave of first-in-class and best-in-class therapeutics, and the early adopters in pharma will be the big winners.”

The fundraise was co-led by Oak HC/FT and General Catalyst, with participation from Thrive Capital, OpenAI, Dimension, Menlo Ventures, Lachy Groom, Yosemite, Neo, and SV Angel. New investors Emerson Collective and Glade Brook also joined the round.

“We believe biology is becoming programmable, rewiring what was once an empirical art into an engineered discipline,” said Elena Viboch, Managing Director at General Catalyst. “Chai’s team is leading this transformation – advancing the technical frontier and expanding what’s possible in therapeutics.”

By converting what has traditionally been a lengthy iteration cycle into a computational process, Chai can materially compress the time to first-in-human studies, tackle hard to drug and “undruggable” targets, and accelerate the overall time to commercialization.

“Nowhere is AI transformation more needed than in drug development – the process is slow, expensive, and imprecise,” said Annie Lamont, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Oak HC/FT. “It can take over a decade and cost upwards of a billion dollars to bring a medicine from bench to bedside. The Chai Discovery team is rewriting that story, fusing world-class AI and biological expertise to dramatically accelerate how medicines are discovered. We’re thrilled to support them as they push the boundaries of what’s possible in this field.”

The company will use the funding to accelerate research and product development, and expand commercialization efforts as they continue to execute on the vision of building a “computer-aided design suite” for molecules.

The Series B round brings Chai’s total funding to more than $225 million. As part of the fundraise, Annie Lamont from Oak HC/FT and Hemant Taneja from General Catalyst will be joining the board.

For more information on Chai Discovery and its platform, visit https://www.chaidiscovery.com.

About Chai Discovery

Chai Discovery builds frontier artificial intelligence to predict and reprogram the interactions between biochemical molecules, the fundamental building blocks of life. Its mission is to transform biology from science into engineering. The team hails from pioneering research and applied AI companies such as OpenAI, Meta FAIR, Stripe, and Google X, and is backed by top investors including OpenAI, Thrive Capital, Menlo Ventures, and Dimension.

About Oak HC/FT

Oak HC/FT is a venture and growth equity firm specializing in investments in fintech and healthcare. Using partnership as a foundation, Oak HC/FT guides companies and founders at every stage, from seed to growth, to create businesses that make a measurable and lasting impact. Founded in 2014, Oak HC/FT has invested in more than 100 portfolio companies and has over $5.3 billion in assets under management. Oak HC/FT is headquartered in Stamford, CT, with an office in San Francisco, CA. Follow Oak HC/FT on LinkedIn and X and learn more at https://www.oakhcft.com/.

About General Catalyst

General Catalyst is a global investment and transformation company that partners with the world’s most ambitious entrepreneurs to drive resilience and applied AI.

We support founders with a long-term view who challenge the status quo, partnering with them from seed to growth stage and beyond.

With offices in the U.S., Europe, and India, we have supported the growth of 800+ businesses, including Airbnb, Anduril, Anthropic, Applied Intuition, Commure, Glean, Gusto, Helsing, Hubspot, Kayak, Livongo, Mistral, Ramp, Samsara, Snap, Stripe, Sword, and Zepto.

For more: www.generalcatalyst.com, @generalcatalyst

1 https://chaiassets.com/chai-2/paper/technical_report_challenging_targets.pdf

Fonte: Business Wire