Kevin Weil launches Warp Sciences with US$215 million for AI drug lab
The startup plans an automated US laboratory to refine promising drug molecules, work often outsourced to Chinese contractors.
Former OpenAI science leader Kevin Weil has launched Warp Sciences, raising US$215 million to develop an automated US laboratory for drug development, Bloomberg reported. The company said the financing, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, gave it a valuation of US$865 million including the new investment.
Warp has about 20 staff and has purchased robotic arms and AI chips. Its plans call for chemists to conduct experiments while wearing cameras and gloves equipped with pressure sensors, generating data to train the startup’s own AI models.
Rather than discover drugs, Warp intends to focus on refining molecules that researchers have already identified as promising. That process can involve making hundreds or thousands of variants to improve performance and reduce side effects.
Drugmakers have often outsourced this work to Chinese companies, particularly WuXi AppTec, because of their lower costs and faster execution. Weil told Bloomberg that some pharmaceutical companies are concerned about handing sensitive data to contractors in China.
Other investors in Warp’s funding round included IVP, Premji Invest and Lux Capital. Individual backers included Sarah Friar, OpenAI’s finance chief; Brian Armstrong, Coinbase’s CEO; and Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s co-founder.
Weil left OpenAI’s science unit in April. His Warp co-founders are Manohar Paluri, previously a vice president at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs; DJ Patil, who served as the White House’s first chief data scientist; and Solomon Reisberg, formerly with Terremoto Biosciences.
