Less than six months after a series A fundraise, AI drug developer Chai Discovery has brewed up a $130 million series B to further energize development of its “computer-aided design suite” for new therapeutics.
The round brings Chai’s total valuation to $1.3 billion, the Bay Area outfit announced in a Dec. 15 release. Oak HC/FT and General Catalyst led the fundraise, with existing investors like Thrive Capital, OpenAI and Menlo Ventures pitching in alongside newcomers Emerson Collective and Glade Brook.
The new cash infusion comes as Chai is still sipping from an August series A that poured $70 million into the company’s cup. That earlier round was paired with the unveiling of Chai 2, a computational model for designing new antibodies, and the announcement that former Pfizer Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten, M.D., Ph.D., had joined Chai's board of directors.
Earlier this month, the Chai team released a preprint—a scientific paper that has not yet been peer-reviewed by other experts— claiming that they had used Chai 2 to develop monoclonal antibodies aimed against tough-to-drug targets, writing that the new designs have properties similar to known antibody drugs.
Like many other AI biotechs, Chai’s goal is to shorten the drug development timeline so that potential new medicines enter first-in-human studies and reach the market quicker, according to the release.
“We’re standing on the precipice of a new era for the biopharmaceutical industry,” Chai co-founder and CEO Josh Meier said in the release. “Our latest models can design molecules that have properties we’d want from actual drugs, and tackle challenging targets that have been out of reach. These 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.”
AI biotechs have been winning big with investors. A recent report from PitchBook found that biotechs using AI from the start—known as AI-native biotechs—have valuation premiums double that of their non-AI peers. Over the past year, venture capital firms have invested $3.2 billion across 135 deals for AI-driven drug development, according to PitchBook.