Chai Discovery, a San Francisco-based startup backed by OpenAI, is the latest drug discovery company to benefit from a flurry of investments at the intersection of health care and A.I. In its latest funding round, the company raised $130 million to accelerate the development of new drugs. The Series B round, announced today (Dec. 15), was co-led by Oak HC/FT and General Catalyst. It brings Chai Discovery’s total funding to more than $225 million and more than doubles its valuation to $1.3 billion.
Other participants included OpenAI, Thrive Capital and Menlo Ventures. Yosemite, the oncology-focused venture firm founded by Steve Jobs’ only son, Reed Jobs, also joined the round, along with Emerson Collective, the investment firm led by Laurene Powell Jobs.
Founded in 2024, Chai Discovery is led by CEO Josh Meier, a computer scientist who formerly worked at Facebook (now Meta) and OpenAI. The company aims to use A.I. to turn biology from a descriptive science into an engineering discipline. Chai released its latest model, Chai-2, which can design novel antibodies to target disease.
Chai Discovery plans to deploy the new capital to expand its commercialization efforts while accelerating research and product development. “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,” Meier said in a statement.
Chai Discovery is one of a growing number of drug discovery startups drawing intense interest from Silicon Valley. As enthusiasm builds around A.I.’s potential in health care, prominent tech leaders are backing ventures at a rapid clip. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has invested in Formation Bio, while LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman launched his own drug discovery startup earlier this year, Manas.
Among the most well-funded companies in the space is Isomorphic Labs, an Alphabet subsidiary spun out of Google DeepMind in 2021. Led by Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, the company raised $600 million in March in its first external funding round. The capital is aimed at advancing its ambition to use A.I. to help cure many of the world’s diseases.
That optimism has been matched by a surge in investment. Venture funding for seed- through growth-stage A.I.-powered health tech companies has reached $10.7 billion this year, according to data from Crunchbase, representing a more than 24 percent increase compared to the $8.6 billion raised in all of 2024.
Meier is confident the spending will pay off. “We’re standing on the precipice of a new era for the biopharmaceutical industry,” he said, adding that A.I. 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.”
