How Chai Discovery is Transforming Molecular Discovery using AI

Chai Discovery, engineering better molecules using artificial intelligence, led by Joshua Meier and Matthew McPartlon, has secured $130 million Series B financing round co-led by Oak HC/FT and General Catalyst, with participation from Thrive Capital, OpenAI, Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, and others, alongside new investors Emerson Collective and Glade Brook, valuing the company at $1.3 Billion. The Series B round brings Chai’s total funding to more than $225 million. As part of the fundraise, Annie Lamont from Oak HC/FT and Hemant Taneja from General Catalyst will be joining the board.

The announcement follows recent breakthroughs from Chai, including models that can design molecules with strong developability and address historically hard-to-drug targets. It also comes just months after Chai Discovery’s $70 million Series A and the launch of Chai 2, a zero-shot generative platform delivering double-digit experimental success rates in de novo antibody design, a 100× improvement over prior computational methods.

Josh Meier, CEO of Chai Discovery, said rapid advances in the company’s models are enabling the design of drug-like molecules and previously unreachable targets, paving the way for a new wave of first- and best-in-class therapeutics.

Investors say Chai Discovery is transforming drug development by making biology programmable and turning slow, empirical discovery into a computational, engineered process. By compressing iteration cycles, Chai can accelerate time to first-in-human studies, tackle hard-to-drug targets, and reduce the cost and timelines of bringing new medicines to market. Oak HC/FT and General Catalyst highlighted the company’s ability to fuse advanced AI with deep biological expertise to fundamentally reshape how therapeutics are discovered.

The funding will accelerate R&D and commercialization as the company builds a computer-aided design platform for molecular discovery.