Chai Discovery raises $130M in Series B funding to advance AI-driven drug design

Chai Discovery, an artificial intelligence (AI) company focused on predicting and reprogramming biochemical molecular interactions for drug discovery, said it has raised $130 million in Series B funding to support continued research, product development, and commercialization efforts.

This latest round of financing values the company at $1.3 billion, according to the announcement. The funding follows recent technical advances that Chai contends enable its models to design molecules with improved developability characteristics and address targets that have historically been difficult to drug using conventional approaches. 

Chai said its AI platforms are intended to shift drug discovery from iterative laboratory experimentation toward a more computationally driven process, with the goal of compressing development timelines and improving candidate quality earlier in the pipeline.

According to the company, its most recent models are designed to generate de novo antibodies with double-digit experimental success rates, representing a significant increase compared with earlier computational methods. Chai said these capabilities could help biopharma developers reduce time to first-in-human studies and improve the efficiency of progressing candidates toward commercialization.

The company plans to use the new capital to expand its AI-driven discovery platforms and scale commercialization as it works toward building what it described as a computer-aided design suite for therapeutic molecules.