Former OpenAI science lead Kevin Weil founds Warp Sciences, raising $215 million to do medicinal chemistry
Kevin Weil, former head of OpenAI's science program, has founded drug discovery chemistry company Warp Sciences, launching with $215 million in new funding about six months after he left OpenAI. The company is building a chemistry contract research organization in the United States; its first service is analog synthesis for lead compound optimization. Experimental data will be used to train its AI models, and chemists wearing cameras and sensor gloves will demonstrate actions so robots can learn experimental operations. Co-founders include former White House chief data scientist DJ Patil and former Meta executive Mano Paluri. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
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Drug discovery chemistry startup Warp Sciences Inc. launched today with $215 million in new funding, six months after co-founder and Chief Executive Kevin Weil left his job running science initiatives at OpenAI Group PBC.
Warp is building a chemistry contract research organization in the U.S. to supply biotech and pharmaceutical companies with the molecules their drug programs need. Lead optimization analog synthesis is the first service. That work produces variations on a promising molecule for the customer’s scientists to compare as they narrow in on a drug candidate.
Data from those physical experiments will train Warp’s artificial intelligence models, with experienced chemists guiding the work as the lab takes on more automation. Robots will learn lab tasks from chemists wearing cameras and sensor gloves, TechCrunch reported.
Weil said in the launch announcement that the physical sciences have yet to get the lift from AI that has “dramatically accelerated software engineering and mathematics.” Chemistry and biology advance when someone makes a compound and tests it, according to Weil, so AI models for science need “real-world data at scale.”
Sol Reisberg, Warp’s co-founder and chief scientific officer, previously led medicinal chemistry work at Terremoto Biosciences Inc. Overseas chemistry partners he worked with in the past left him worried about protecting the intellectual property behind his programs.
Hiring a boutique U.S. contract research firm instead means paying what he called a “price premium.” Warp aims to match the caliber of those overseas partners from labs in the U.S., at prices that leave the markup out.
A lot of that overseas work ends up in China. Contracts with Chinese companies for preclinical and clinical services were in place at 74% of the 124 biotech companies the Biotechnology Innovation Organization surveyed in 2024, according to Reuters. The BIOSECURE Act now restricts federal contracts and grants involving designated “biotechnology companies of concern.” President Donald Trump signed it into law in December.
As a contractor, Warp makes only the molecules its customers choose. “We’re not developing drugs of our own,” said co-founder and Chief Operating Officer DJ Patil.
Patil was a founding executive at Devoted Health Inc. after serving as the White House’s first chief data scientist. The fourth co-founder, Chief Technology Officer Mano Paluri, was part of the team that started Meta Platforms Inc.’s AI research group years before he became a vice president at Meta Superintelligence Labs.
Lightspeed Venture Partners LP led the funding round. The 18 other participating firms include Institutional Venture Partners LP, Lux Capital Management and Menlo Ventures LP. Coinbase Global Inc. Chief Executive Brian Armstrong and OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar invested as individuals, as did 11 other angel investors.
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