Key Takeaways
- • Warp Sciences emerged from stealth with $215 million in funding to build U.S.-based scientific infrastructure for biotech and pharmaceutical discovery.
- • The round was led by Lightspeed, with participation from Premji Invest, Mayfield, IVP, Lux, Conviction, Menlo Ventures, and more than a dozen other investors.
- • Warp is developing a chemistry contract research organization (CRO) that combines expert chemists, AI, and robotics to make and test molecules for research teams.
- • Warp has no proprietary drug pipeline; it sells research infrastructure to companies discovering new medicines.
- • Angel investors include Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica, and several senior OpenAI executives, and founders Kevin Weil, DJ Patil, Sol Reisberg and Mano Paluri bring experience from OpenAI, Meta, Devoted Health and the White House.
Summary
Warp Sciences today emerged from stealth with $215 million in funding, according to the company's announcement, to build infrastructure that enables biotech and pharmaceutical companies to discover new medicines faster. The company is headquartered in San Francisco and is building a U.S.-based chemistry contract research organization (CRO) that brings together expert chemists, artificial intelligence, and robotics to make and test the molecules research teams need.
The funding round was led by Lightspeed, with participation from Premji Invest, Mayfield, IVP, Lux, Conviction, Menlo Ventures, 01 Advisors, Standard, Lowercarbon Capital, Gigascale Capital, Angular Ventures, Scribble Ventures, Uncork Capital, Innovation Endeavors, Matter VP, Zero Shot Fund, SignalFire and Moxxie Ventures. The company also attracted a group of angel investors that includes Brian Armstrong (Coinbase CEO), Mike Krieger (Anthropic Labs co-lead and Instagram co-founder), Milan Kovac (former Tesla Robotics VP), Ion Stoica (Databricks co-founder), Fidji Simo (former OpenAI AGI Deployment CEO), Sarah Friar (OpenAI CFO) and Mark Chen (OpenAI Chief Research Officer), among others.
Warp describes its ambition as a "discovery compound" in which experimental data helps train better AI, better AI powers more capable labs, and scientists gain capacity to test more ideas. The labs are designed for increasing automation and to run and learn from experiments so that each cycle can improve the next. Warp has no proprietary drug pipeline; it builds infrastructure for the research teams that are discovering new medicines.
The company's founders, Kevin Weil, DJ Patil, Sol Reisberg and Mano Paluri, bring experience from OpenAI, Terremoto Biosciences, Meta, Devoted Health and the White House, according to the announcement.
The funding round was led by Lightspeed, with participation from Premji Invest, Mayfield, IVP, Lux, Conviction, Menlo Ventures, 01 Advisors, Standard, Lowercarbon Capital, Gigascale Capital, Angular Ventures, Scribble Ventures, Uncork Capital, Innovation Endeavors, Matter VP, Zero Shot Fund, SignalFire and Moxxie Ventures. The company also attracted a group of angel investors that includes Brian Armstrong (Coinbase CEO), Mike Krieger (Anthropic Labs co-lead and Instagram co-founder), Milan Kovac (former Tesla Robotics VP), Ion Stoica (Databricks co-founder), Fidji Simo (former OpenAI AGI Deployment CEO), Sarah Friar (OpenAI CFO) and Mark Chen (OpenAI Chief Research Officer), among others.
Warp describes its ambition as a "discovery compound" in which experimental data helps train better AI, better AI powers more capable labs, and scientists gain capacity to test more ideas. The labs are designed for increasing automation and to run and learn from experiments so that each cycle can improve the next. Warp has no proprietary drug pipeline; it builds infrastructure for the research teams that are discovering new medicines.
The company's founders, Kevin Weil, DJ Patil, Sol Reisberg and Mano Paluri, bring experience from OpenAI, Terremoto Biosciences, Meta, Devoted Health and the White House, according to the announcement.
Go deeper than the headline
Research every firm in this story, track the ones that matter and get the daily briefing — free for 7 days.