Chai Discovery Raises $130 Million

<p><strong>SAN FRANCISCO<&sol;strong> &&num;8212&semi; Chai Discovery&comma; the AI company that predicts and reprograms the interactions between biochemical molecules&comma; has raised &dollar;130 million Series B financing round co-led by Oak HC&sol;FT and General Catalyst&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The Series B round brings Chai’s total funding to more than &dollar;225 million and values the company at &dollar;1&period;3 billion&period; As part of the funding&comma; Annie Lamont from Oak HC&sol;FT and Hemant Taneja from General Catalyst will be joining the board&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The news comes on the heels of Chai’s most recent announcement<sup>1<&sol;sup>&comma; where the company showed their latest models can now design molecules with important &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;developability” properties and tackle &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;hard-to-drug” targets that have historically been challenging for traditional techniques&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The round also comes just months after Chai Discovery announced a &dollar;70 million Series A and revealed Chai 2&comma; 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&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;We’re standing on the precipice of a new era for the biopharmaceutical industry&comma;” said Josh Meier&comma; co-founder and CEO of Chai Discovery&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;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&period; Our latest models can design molecules that have properties we’d want from actual drugs&comma; and tackle challenging targets that have been out of reach&period; These models will unleash a new wave of first-in-class and best-in-class therapeutics&comma; and the early adopters in pharma will be the big winners&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The fundraise was co-led by Oak HC&sol;FT and General Catalyst&comma; with participation from Thrive Capital&comma; OpenAI&comma; Dimension&comma; Menlo Ventures&comma; Lachy Groom&comma; Yosemite&comma; Neo&comma; and SV Angel&period; New investors Emerson Collective and Glade Brook also joined the round&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;We believe biology is becoming programmable&comma; rewiring what was once an empirical art into an engineered discipline&comma;” said Elena Viboch&comma; Managing Director at General Catalyst&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Chai’s team is leading this transformation – advancing the technical frontier and expanding what’s possible in therapeutics&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>By converting what has traditionally been a lengthy iteration cycle into a computational process&comma; Chai can materially compress the time to first-in-human studies&comma; tackle hard to drug and &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;undruggable” targets&comma; and accelerate the overall time to commercialization&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Nowhere is AI transformation more needed than in drug development – the process is slow&comma; expensive&comma; and imprecise&comma;” said Annie Lamont&comma; Co-Founder &amp&semi; Managing Partner at Oak HC&sol;FT&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;It can take over a decade and cost upwards of a billion dollars to bring a medicine from bench to bedside&period; The Chai Discovery team is rewriting that story&comma; fusing world-class AI and biological expertise to dramatically accelerate how medicines are discovered&period; We’re thrilled to support them as they push the boundaries of what’s possible in this field&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The company will use the funding to accelerate research and product development&comma; and expand commercialization efforts as they continue to execute on the vision of building a &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;computer-aided design suite” for molecules&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&nbsp&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;

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