Dark horse rises! AI startup backed by OpenAI, founded only 6 months ago
AI startup Chai Discovery raised nearly $30 million at a valuation of $150 million within six months of its establishment, led by Thrive Capital with participation from OpenAI. Chai focuses on developing AI models that can predict biochemical molecular structures, aiming to accelerate new drug development. Its first open-source model, "Chai-1", outperforms AlphaFold and ESM3, increasing success rates in key drug development tasks by 10% to 20%. The company was founded by Joshua Meier, former Chief AI Officer of Absci Corp, and currently has a team of less than 10 people
According to media reports, Chai Discovery, a artificial intelligence biotechnology startup established nearly half a year ago, raised nearly $30 million in the latest round of financing at a valuation of $150 million.
Thrive Capital, a well-known venture capital firm, led Chai's seed round financing, with investors including leading global artificial intelligence company OpenAI and Dimension Capital.
According to Chai, the company's AI base model can predict the structure of biochemical molecules and reprogram their interactions, a crucial process for drug development.
Co-founder and CEO Joshua Meier stated, "We aim to transform biology from a science into an engineering discipline."
In recent years, there has been much excitement about the potential of AI to accelerate drug development. Two years ago, Google DeepMind's "AlphaFold" tool shocked the scientific community with its ability to predict the structures of millions of proteins.
In June of this year, EvolutionaryScale, a leading AI research lab in the field of biology, launched an AI model called "ESM3" that can generate new proteins and secured $142 million in seed funding.
On Monday, Chai also released its first open-source molecular structure model, "Chai-1," along with a technical report comparing its performance with AlphaFold and ESM3. Meier stated that Chai's model performed better.
"We have seen success rates improve by 10% to 20% in various problems we have used it to solve," he said. "For example, compared to AlphaFold, our model performs better on crucial tasks in drug development."
Before founding Chai, Meier was the Chief AI Officer at biotechnology company Absci Corp and had worked as a researcher at Meta and OpenAI.
In March of this year, Meier co-founded Chai with Stripe engineer Jack Dent. Meier mentioned that Chai currently has fewer than 10 employees but has attracted top talent from companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta.
Co-founder and President Jack Dent stated that Chai's first model is free, and there are currently no plans to commercialize their technology.
According to PitchBook data, venture capital firms invested nearly $30 billion in biopharmaceutical startups in 2023. Google AI head Demis Hassabis believes that the market's value could exceed $100 billion For Chai, competition comes not only from other AI startups, but also from big companies like Google. Miles Grimshaw, a partner at Thrive Capital, the lead investor in this round of financing, said, "The field is big enough to accommodate everyone."
Grimshaw added, "One advantage of working in this field is that making progress in one aspect alone can be profitable."
