Kevin Weil, who ran OpenAI's science unit until leaving the company in April, has launched a new startup called Warp Sciences aimed at using AI to speed up a key step in drug development. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the company's $215 million funding round, with participation from IVP, Premji Invest and Lux Capital, valuing Warp at $865 million after the new investment.
Bringing an outsourced step back to the US
Warp is building an automated lab in the United States for a stage of drug development that pharmaceutical companies have long outsourced to Chinese contract-research firms such as WuXi AppTec. Weil is chief executive, joined by a co-founding team that includes Manohar Paluri, a former vice president at Meta's Superintelligence Labs; DJ Patil, who served as the White House's first chief data scientist; and Solomon Reisberg, a former executive at Terremoto Biosciences.
