AI drug discovery startup Xaira Therapeutics gets $1 billion
The tech industry is in a state of chaos due to the advances in generative AI. It’s a large bet for biotech investors that similar computer techniques could transform the drug discovery process.
AI drug discovery startup Xaira Therapeutics gets $1 billion
ARCH Venture Partners and Foresite Labs, a subsidiary of Foresite Capital, declared on Tuesday that they had invested $1 billion in the AI biotech startup Xaira Therapeutics. F-Prime, NEA, Sequoia Capital, Lux Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, and SV Angel are among the other investors in the startup, which has been running in stealth mode for roughly six months.
AI drug discovery startup Xaira Therapeutics gets $1 billion
CEO of Xaira Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a former president of Stanford University and chief scientific officer of Genentech, claims the business is prepared to begin creating medications that would not have been conceivable without recent advances in artificial intelligence. “We feel that the technology is at a turning point where it can have a revolutionary impact on the field, which is why we’ve undertaken such a significant capital raise,” he stated.
The University of Washington’s Institute of Protein Design, led by co-founder of Xaira David Baker, is responsible for the advancements in basic models. Diffusion models like the ones behind OpenAI’s DALL-E and Midjourney picture generators are comparable to these models. However, Baker’s models are meant to develop molecular structures that can be built in a three-dimensional physical environment, not to create art.
AI drug discovery startup Xaira Therapeutics gets $1 billion
Investors of Xaira are confident that the company can transform data design, but they also pointed out that the field of generative AI applications in biology is still in its infancy.
Foresite Capital’s managing director and CEO, Vik Bajaj, noted that biology and medicine are “data poor,” in contrast to technology, where user-generated data is used to train AI models. The datasets that inform model development must be created by you.
Recursion, which went public in 2021, and Genesis Therapeutics, a business that secured a $200 million Series B last year co-led by Andreessen Horowitz, are two other biotech companies using generative AI for developing drugs.
AI drug discovery startup Xaira Therapeutics gets $1 billion
The business declined to say when it anticipates making its first medication accessible for use in human trials. However, Bob Nelsen, managing director of ARCH Venture Partners, emphasized that Xaira and its investors are prepared to take a long-term approach.
