Chai Discovery, an AI-driven company focused on predicting and reprogramming interactions between biochemical molecules, announced the completion of its $130 million Series B funding round, co-led by Oak HC/FT and General Catalyst, valuing the company at $1.3 billion. This financing follows the company’s recent $70 million Series A and comes as Chai unveiled its Chai 2 platform, the first zero-shot generative system achieving double-digit experimental success rates in de novo antibody design, representing a 100-fold improvement over previous computational methods. The company’s latest models are capable of designing molecules with developability properties and targeting traditionally difficult or “hard-to-drug” sites, accelerating drug discovery and opening new possibilities for first-in-class and best-in-class therapeutics.
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Josh Meier, co-founder and CEO of Chai Discovery, said the company is entering a transformative phase in biopharmaceutical research. He noted that problems once expected to take years are now being solved in weeks thanks to their AI models. He emphasized that these models not only design molecules with properties suitable for drug development but also tackle previously inaccessible targets, giving early adopters in the pharmaceutical industry a competitive edge.
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The Series B round was co-led by Oak HC/FT and General Catalyst, with participation from Thrive Capital, OpenAI, Dimension, Menlo Ventures, Lachy Groom, Yosemite, Neo, and SV Angel. New investors Emerson Collective and Glade Brook also joined the round. Elena Viboch, Managing Director at General Catalyst, highlighted that biology is becoming increasingly programmable and Chai is at the forefront of transforming drug discovery from an empirical art into an engineered discipline.
Annie Lamont, co-founder and managing partner at Oak HC/FT, explained that the traditional drug development process is slow, costly, and uncertain, often taking over a decade and exceeding a billion dollars to bring a medicine to market. She praised Chai’s integration of advanced AI and biological expertise, which dramatically accelerates drug discovery, compresses time to first-in-human studies, and enables companies to target previously undruggable molecules.
The new funds will be used to expand Chai’s research and product development capabilities and accelerate commercialization of its AI-powered design platform. The Series B round increases Chai Discovery’s total funding to over $225 million, and as part of the investment, Annie Lamont from Oak HC/FT and Hemant Taneja from General Catalyst will join the company’s board, supporting its mission to revolutionize the drug discovery process.
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