Biotech Startups funded by Y Combinator (YC) 2025

We make oral drugs to treat and prevent viral infections - like COVID-19.

Biotechnology is rewriting life as we know it, from the medicines we take, to the crops we grow, the materials we wear, and the household goods that we rely on every day. Biotech R&D is radically transforming our world, but to move at the new speed of science, scientists need better technology. Benchling’s mission is to unlock the power of biotechnology. The world’s biotech leaders and innovators use our R&D Cloud to power the development of breakthrough products and accelerate time to milestone and market.

Miracle is the control room for clinical trials. Our platform consolidates data from multiple trial systems into real-time dashboards, delivering automated insights that empower clinical-stage biopharmaceutical companies to streamline operations, reduce manual workflows, and accelerate data-driven decision-making. By transforming complex trial data into actionable insights, Miracle helps biopharma teams speed up clinical trials, and ultimately, improve patient outcomes.

Mytos builds robots for manufacturing human cells. Operators input stem cells, and our platform turns them into specific cells such as neurons and heart cells over multiple weeks. Last year, patients were cured of Parkinson’s, vision loss, and Type 1 diabetes using stem-cell derived cells. We need 1000x the global capacity to produce these cells, and treat millions of patients. But today these Regenerative Medicines are produced by hand, meaning they’re too expensive and don’t scale. Mytos has fully automated production of these cells, making it scalable. We have our first manufacturing deal - neurons for treating Parkinson’s - and we’re in conversations with majority of the other top players.

Velorum Therapeutics is developing breakthrough medicines by unlocking the biology of heme.

Birch Biosciences engineers enzymes for plastic recycling using synthetic biology and machine learning. Our enzymes function as high performance “molecular scissors” that efficiently break down plastic polymers into chemical building blocks that can be used to manufacture high quality recycled plastic products. Today, plastic manufacturing is unsustainable and a major driver of climate change. Birch Biosciences is developing an economical end-to-end plastic recycling process that reduces carbon emissions by 70% and enables a circular plastic economy.

Pests and pathogens cost the world hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Existing technologies like agrochemicals are no longer working. Ohmic Biosciences uses protein engineering to design resistance genes for crops that are robust to pathogen evolution.

Serna Bio is developing small molecules to modulate RNA function, unlocking the potential to treat diseases driven by biology intractable by other modalities.

We are developing cancer therapeutics using small molecules that inhibit immune suppression. Our drugs engage the immune system to aggressively fight tumors. Our therapeutic portfolio addresses a range of solid tumors, starting with mesothelioma.

We are developing an implantable therapeutic tissue that will be surgically delivered to patients suffering from end stage renal disease. Upon implantation, this tissue will supplement the patient's renal function, eliminating their dependency on dialysis and improving their disease status. This has the potential to not only get these patients off dialysis - a significant impact for them and their families - but to greatly extend the time required before kidney transplantation is essential.

Today, biologists spend too much time pipetting by hand. We think biologists should have robots to do pipetting for them. People doing science should be free of tedious benchwork and repetitive stress injuries. They should be able to spend their time designing experiments and analyzing data. That's why we started Opentrons. We make robots for biologists. Our mission is to provide the scientific community with a common platform to easily share protocols and reproduce each other's results. Our robots automate experiments that would otherwise be done by hand, allowing our community to spend more time pursuing answers to some of the 21st century’s most important questions.

🦠🤖 We use our computational models to make next-generation antibiotics that outcompete bacterial evolution and precisely target pathogenic bacteria, without harming good microbes or human cells. ☠️ Current antibiotics stop working because bacteria evolve resistance to them. This makes drug-resistant bacteria a looming global health crisis - already killing more people than malaria and AIDS and it is getting exponentially worse 📈. 🧬 Our approach leverages co-evolutionary protein-protein interaction datasets combined with AI to forecast bacterial mutations and create ‘future-proof’ antibiotics, addressing antibiotic resistance before it develops. This changes the game for how frequently society will need to make new antibiotics and how long our new antibiotics will be able to treat patients 👩‍⚕️. We are a team of biochemists and evolutionary biologists who met at the University of Oxford.

We build software to manage, analyze, and optimize bioprocessing data. Our initial customers are bio-industrial companies, who produce various products in bioreactors.

Granza Bio is a biotechnology company developing a novel delivery "shell" platform to direct therapeutic cargo to specific tissues. Their proprietary delivery vehicles are designed using non-immunogenic proteins equipped with a targeting receptor, achieving targeted tropism to organs of interest. These vehicles offer higher stability than conventional lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) and can encompass a variety of cargo, including proteins, DNA, and RNA. For their lead candidate, Granza Bio is leveraging the discovery of the immune system's powerful suite of weapons, "attack particles". Utilizing their advanced delivery platform, they aim to target these "attack particles" against a range of diseases such as cancer, autoimmune disorders, and infections. Interested to know more? Get in touch info@granzabio.com!

Our vision is to provide regenerative medicine treatments that free patients from chronic liver disease and help usher in an era where diseased and damaged tissues can be repaired.

We are combining synthetic biology and artificial intelligence to make cancer detection as easy as a pregnancy test. Cleancard's mission is to bring lab-grade diagnostics into the comfort of your home. Our novel method enables robust diagnostics and biomarker tracking from the urine. We are currently developing fully at-home, 30-minute tests for cancer using this methodology. We are constantly expanding the number of conditions we can detect from a single sample with our platform technology.

Diffuse is building generative AI for protein design. Our mission is to build AI systems that engineer new and useful proteins with unprecedented control and accuracy. Our team has been behind breakthroughs in AI protein design for the past 7 years, including the first experimental validation of AI-generated proteins and diffusion models for protein structure and sequence.

Entelexo is creating modern treatments for immune-mediated diseases, such as psoriasis, using novel engineered exosome technology.

At Maven Bio, we’re transforming BioPharma knowledge work by pairing domain-specific AI with curated industry data—letting consultants, investors, and corporate teams move from question to decision with less manual work. Our integrated BioPharma-specific platform features four flagship modules: • Maven Workflows: Monitor Maven's domain-specific AI through structured research tasks—step by step—and finalize results with confidence. • Maven Atlas: Access hundreds of pre-built indication landscapes, or generate custom ones on demand for in-depth insights. • Maven Compass: Build precise lists of companies, drugs, trials, or documents with advanced filters—move faster with AI-driven filter suggestions. • Maven Assistant: Get instant answers to your BioPharma questions, complete with direct links to primary sources. Stop burning hours on manual data hunts. Maven Bio’s continuously updated database and collaborative AI features empower you to focus on strategic decisions. We offer usage-based pricing and usage-restricted trials, plus custom solutions for unique data sources or specialized workflows. Trusted by life science consultants, BD teams, and investors worldwide, Maven Bio delivers faster, deeper insights. Book a call to learn how our purpose-built AI can transform your research and accelerate your success.

ParcelBio is delivering the next generation of RNA medicines.

Gleam is an AI platform that helps clinical research sites, sponsors, and CROs get to bring life-saving products to market faster.

Angstrom AI builds GenAI-based molecular simulations to substitute wet lab experiments in the pre-clinical drug development pipeline. We are a team of 2 PhD's and 2 Professors from the University of Cambridge who decided to start a company together after we realised how to combine breakthoughs in our research in quantum-accurate models of physics and generative AI models. Our Biotech/Pharma clients can verify the efficacy and safety of new drug candidates using our computer simulations, which match the accuracy of wet lab experiments, but are over 100x faster. We achieve this accuracy by constraining our genAI-based simulations to obey the laws of physics, avoiding the hallucinations seen in other GenAI technologies. Since joining YC, Angstrom AI has developed the first physically accurate gen-AI based simulation of multiple molecules interacting. We have published the first molecule water solubility results with accuracy within the error range of wet lab experiments. We have also kicked-off a 150K pilot project with a pharma company to apply our tech to estimating solubility in their drug development pipeline.

Probably Genetic is changing the lives of patients living with severe, complex diseases. Our data platform is used by drug developers and patient advocacy groups to develop and launch treatments for these patients. Our technology discovers undiagnosed patients online, analyzes their disease state using machine learning and at-home testing, and enables compliant communication with patients. In doing so, we help patients access diagnoses, clinical trials, and treatments as early as possible.

transforming degraded land into high quality environmental assets using end to end operational expertise and precision breeding.

Asher Bio is a biotechnology company developing precisely targeted immunotherapies for cancer and other diseases. Our cis-targeting platform aims to enable selective activation of specific immune cell types, addressing the inherent limitations of otherwise pleiotropic immunotherapies that act on multiple cell types. Our approach has the potential to precisely direct different immune mediators against a range of target immune cell-types and create best-in-class immunotherapies in cancer, autoimmune and infectious diseases. Asher Bio is backed by Third Rock Ventures and is located in South San Francisco.

Shasqi is leading the development of therapeutics leveraging click chemistry to get active cancer treatments to tumors with its proprietary CAPAC™ platform. Our technology is based on localizing a click chemistry reagent in the tumor area, which then activates a second agent, a systemically infused protodrug. When the two 'click', a powerful localized therapy is activated at the tumor, while keeping its systemic exposure levels below toxic thresholds.

YourChoice Therapeutics is revolutionizing the global contraceptive market. Our vision is to develop non-hormonal contraceptives to provide both women and men with birth control options that lack the associated risks of hormone-based options but are equally effective. Traditionally, it has been the women’s financial and health burden to have a contraceptive in place. Our first goal is therefore to bring a novel non-hormonal, on-demand and low cost female contraceptive to the market that will substantially improve their quality of life and well-being. Our second goal is to develop the first ever non-surgical and highly effective non-hormonal contraceptive for men. Currently, male contraception is limited to two main options – vasectomy or condoms. Having such options available to both women and men will globally allow for much better family planning, reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies including abortions and therefore reduce costs and ensure contraceptive health and well-being.

At Pirouette, we have developed a low-profile, disk-shaped, rugged injection device with a patient-centric focus on affordability, portability, and usability. The patented device, based on extensive patient input, is designed to make administering an injection as easy as pushing a button. This allows individuals with limited or no training to easily and intuitively perform an injection on themselves or others.

We are a drug discovery company developing a new generation of therapeutics that embrace the complexity of disease. Currently available approaches for creating drugs work on the principle of finding one drug-one protein 'magic bullets'. However, diseases such as cancer and autoimmunity are often the result of several dysregulated proteins across many distinct biological pathways. We are building a computational-experimental platform to design therapeutics that can target several disease-causing proteins at once. By designing multi-specific drugs, we are able to create therapeutics that are more efficacious and safer than existing medicines.

Raycaster is the enterprise AI engine for life sciences. From speeding up regulatory approval and manufacturing tech transfer, Raycaster advances the Industry 4.0 initiatives with world's leading life sciences companies.

We're developing a free vaccine to cure HIV and AIDs. Immunity Project is a non-profit initiative dedicated to developing an HIV vaccine. We hacked the HIV life cycle to develop a vaccine that gives you the same power as HIV controllers. With success in our clinical trials, our goal is to give our vaccine away to the world for free.

Design, simulate, and test your proteins 100x faster with the end-to-end no-code platform for protein engineering. Powered by Amina, our AI agent. With Amina, one protein engineer can do the work of 10. Describe what you want to achieve and Amina will handle everything else – from research and design to simulation, folding, docking, and protein characterization. It asks clarifying questions if needed, intelligently understands and performs the task, and analyzes your results within the context of your project.

Nephrogen is a biotech company developing curative gene therapies for kidney and pancreatic diseases. Kidney disease affects 1 in 7 Americans (~50 million people), has no cure, and accounts for nearly 10% of the Medicare budget.

At Undermind, we're building a search engine that can handle extremely complex questions. It’s geared at experts, like research scientists and doctors, who need to find very specific resources to solve high-stakes problems. We’ve rebuilt search from the ground up to address this. Our new approach employs high-quality LLMs to adaptively explore a database, mimicking how a human researcher carefully discovers information. This approach dramatically outperforms (by 10-50x) traditional keyword search and other modern AI-based retrieval methods. Our first target users are the 50 million researchers searching for scientific literature on PubMed and Google Scholar every month. We’ve have paying users across fields like medicine, ML, biotech, finance, and more.

Numerion Labs is an AI-native company accelerating the discovery of life-saving medicines through the development and use of cutting-edge machine learning algorithms. The company unites computational chemistry, structural biology, and medicinal chemistry to pioneer the next generation of AI-driven drug discovery platforms.

Proteins power everything from the cells in your body to creating materials you rely on every day—but until now, we’ve been forced to discover their functions by trial and error. Designing a new therapeutic can take decades and billions of dollars, and even our best industrial catalysts work at a snail’s pace compared to their theoretical optimums. Anthrogen is changing that. By training massive AI foundation models on protein sequences and structures, we’ve unlocked the ability to generate—on demand—completely novel molecular machines with atomic-level precision. Simply describe the function you need, and our platform imagines the peptide or protein that will deliver it. We're building models to speed up billions of years of evolution into the span of an afternoon's worth of compute. The result? New-to-nature therapies, ultra-efficient catalysts for sustainable manufacturing, and a whole new frontier of molecular innovation—designed as precisely as any cutting-edge aircraft or microchip.

Kopra Bio makes genetically engineered viruses that teach your immune system to kill cancer using tech we developed at UCSF. We’re making the next Keytruda ($25B/yr cancer drug blockbuster) starting with the most aggressive form of brain cancer, glioblastoma. In the most challenging brain cancer model, we improve survival from 0% with the current FDA approved treatment to 90% with our treatment.

We are developing a drug to increase metabolism and burn calories without exercise. Obesity and type 2 diabetes have reached epidemic proportions. There are 2.2B overweight people and 500M people with type 2 diabetes worldwide, and these numbers increase drastically every year. Existing drugs are not effective enough to reverse the trend. Our drug can solve this problem, because it addresses the root cause of metabolic disorders – the imbalance between caloric intake and expenditure. Our drug will target mitochondria – the powerhouse of the cell – to generate heat. This approach has been proven to fully reverse obesity and type 2 diabetes in animals. However, therapeutic application for humans was impossible, because mitochondrial heat production could only be induced by highly artificial methods with side effects. This changed after our recent breakthrough discovery of the protein that mitochondria naturally use to generate heat. We have developed a unique high-throughput drug discovery platform to identify compounds that selectively activate this target protein, without side effects. For decades people have wanted a drug that burns calories like exercise does. We are realizing this dream at Equator Therapeutics.

Future Fields has developed the world's first multicellular advanced biomanufacturing platform for the production of the most challenging recombinant proteins. We help companies in biotech, life sciences, and pharma by manufacturing their proteins.

Kernal Bio is a biotech company pioneering mRNA 2.0 immunotherapies. We leverage selective mRNA-LNP technology to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases with precision, ensuring targeted cell delivery and minimal off-target effects. Our KR-402 program achieves over 90% delivery efficiency with T-cell-targeted LNPs, enabling direct CAR-T programming within the body and resulting in B-cell depletion within a week. Kernal Bio is led by a team with experience from MIT, Harvard, Merck, and BMS, boasting three FDA-approved therapies and over 120 patents. Based in Cambridge, MA, we are backed by Hummingbird Ventures, Amgen Ventures, HBM, and even NASA. With roots at MIT, Harvard and Biopharma, Kernal’s management team has deep expertise in mRNA therapeutics space. CEO Yusuf Erkul, M.D., M.B.A. is a successful drug hunter whose research at Merck enabled an FDA-approved drug for ovarian cancer. President Burak Yilmaz, M.S., previously founded Sentegen, a thriving synthetic biology company which commercializes synthetic DNA, RNA, and diagnostic kits for genetic and infectious diseases. Sr. VP of R&D Manfred Kraus is a leader in immuno-oncology, who was most recently Scientific Sr. Director at Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS).

1849 bio designs microbes enabling cheap metal extraction allowing miners to unlock value from low quality copper and gold ores. Surprisingly, the mining industry is one of the largest scale users of biotech in the world with biomining processes accounting for ~1% of global copper production. Biomining is ultra-low cost, running around ~$1/ton of ore vs ~$7/ton for conventional processes. Unfortunately, while biomining is cheap, it can’t be applied to over 80% of copper ores, leaving vast resources without profitable extraction methods. An estimated ~$800B of copper sit today in waste materials and stockpiles with negative unit economics. While a great deal of effort has been spent on optimizing microbial metal extraction processes, very little effort has been spent on optimizing the microbes themselves. To change that, we’re creating new biotech tools and platforms applied directly to the types of biology most relevant to miners. This enables us to develop new microbes and tackle some of the most difficult problems in biomining, unlocking billions in value from unprofitable resources while being more environmentally friendly than conventional processes. We’re world class microbial engineers. We met while doing our PhDs in synthetic biology, where we spent our time applying and developing the most advanced bioengineering technologies to engineer living cells. 

Finding new cures requires seeing what and where the abnormal molecules are in a diseased tissue, but current tools see less than 1% of those molecules. Biocartesian combines microscopy and new chemistries to see 50X more, offering unprecedented insights into disease biology and new therapies.

Synvivia applies chemical control over cell behavior. This allows us to optimize biomanufacturing of high-value biopharmaceutical products.

Sigma Genetics develops devices that can deliver DNA, RNA, and other charged molecules into cells by using magnetic fields. When compared to conventional electroporation, this technique has several key advantages, which include: the absence of arcing, the ability to scale, and the benefit of being non-invasive for in vivo applications. This platform technology can be applied to a wide range of applications- cell therapies, cancer drug delivery, DNA vaccines, biopharma manufacturing, and cosmetics.

We're building Quinn at iollo, an AI scientist that analyzes multimodal biological data (multi-omics, imaging, etc.) to discover new biology in hours, work that typically takes teams of scientists years. Quinn translates these discoveries into accelerated development of novel therapeutic strategies and interventions for extending healthspan.

If it isn’t bad enough that smokers don’t realize the scientific facts about nicotine, most non-tobacco nicotine products are poorly designed and unappealing to use. The leading gum is sold like a pharmaceutical drug, with flavoring and packaging to match. Vapes provide a cumbersome, over-the-top experience — with use as tightly restricted as cigarette smoking itself, but more juvenile, conspicuous, and highly addictive. People want, and deserve, a better way. Therefore, we want to deliver nicotine users a superior experience, and at the same time give them a way to transition out of feeling dependent. In a better society, people wouldn’t carry around the sensation that they’re stuck with an involuntary habit. Our mission isn’t to encourage nicotine use among people who haven’t started. Unlike certain vapes or other products, ours isn’t the sort coveted by underage users on social media. Our mission is to alleviate the harm related to tobacco — first and foremost, by switching people away from the most harmful products. So, at Lucy, we take an evidence based view of nicotine. Nicotine’s pleasurable properties make it an inevitable part of modern society. Therefore, minimizing harm in all nicotine products is key, in addition to giving people products and strategies for cessation. We feel that, as 1,300 people are dying of tobacco related illnesses every day in the US, the most important and immediate step toward a better society is giving nicotine consumers products they enjoy using that will cause less harm. Our first product is designed to appeal to smokers and encourage them to switch. And, looking ahead, we hope to secure approval in the future as a clinically proven smoking cessation aid, while continuing to participate in the FDA’s public hearings around how NRTs are best regulated. Our goals are simple: because harm reduction is a better strategy around nicotine delivery than abstinence or prohibition, we want to help improve public health — and reduce its costs — through a superior pure nicotine product.

C16 Biosciences is decarbonizing consumer products supply chains by producing next-generation ingredients. The company's biomanufacturing platform produces better performing, more sustainable alternatives to oils and fats, and their first product is an alternative to palm oil. The company owns and operates Palmless™ alternative fats and oils.

CB Therapeutics is a synthetic biology company focused on bringing cannabinoid and tryptamine therapeutics to the clinic and commercial markets to treat depression, PTSD, opioid addiction, alcoholism, pain, and other mental health problems.

Culture Biosciences grows cells for biotech companies. Our customers genetically modify organisms to produce new therapeutics, materials, fuels and foods. We help them quickly run experiments and develop manufacturing processes so they can get their products to market faster. We've built proprietary software and automation systems to make operating our bioreactors more efficient than existing systems. We also provide customers with new software tools that help them analyze and contextualize their data. We are currently serving a number of biotech customers and scaling out our infrastructure.

The main document in a clinical trial is the study protocol. At large companies, floors of people use the protocol to create the study data collection forms, clinical database design, error checks, analysis code, and data transformation mappings. We use AI to automate the process of creating everything from the protocol, saving not only spend on headcount but also months of time which can translate to up to $27M in direct costs + lost revenue saved for a single phase 3 trial.

An AI-maximalist pharma platform. We use agents to buy drugs, run clinical trials, and sell for a profit. 10x faster and 20x leaner than incumbents. Sourcing Agent: Mines public/private databases and unstructured global data to surface overlooked preclinical candidates. Scientific Agent: Runs comp bio models (ESM-3, RFdiffusion, Boltz-2, AlphaFold) to assess safety and efficacy in silico. Commercial Agent: Analyzes FDA incentives, pricing dynamics, TAM, competitive landscape, and payer alignment. Clinical Agent: Runs digital twin simulations, evaluates CRO/CMC risk, and builds trial plans to Phase 1. BD Agent: Summarizes and delivers company-tailored pitches. Built by 2 Stanford CS students who have built 3 startups together before.

Valink Therapeutics develops next generation antibody-based therapeutics. We identify novel mechanism of action from known targets by incorporating multiple antibody modifications at once, rapidly and scalable generating complex drug candidates (bi-/multispecificity, multivalency and drug-conjugation in a single discovery process). Our research focus is on solid tumours poorly addressed by immunotherapy.

A conversational AI platform built for life sciences extending field reach, enabling 24/7 compliant engagement, and scaling trusted conversations with HCPs and patients.

GEn1E Lifesciences is a Clinical-stage, multi-target company with a unique AI platform. We develop novel, next-generation, immunomodulatory therapies for rare & inflammatory diseases with no effective treatments. Our team is supercharging the drug development cycle by applying AI to multiple-mechanism-of-action protein targets and their natural platform capabilities—creating novel therapeutics at an unprecedented pace. Our AI platform has enabled us to develop a purpose-built therapy for ARDS to reduce its $20 billion cost on society (just in the USA). GEn1E has built a rich pipeline of 21+ novel and selective immunomodulators and has plans to accelerate 2 additional devastating diseases (beyond their lead indication) to IND in the next 12 months. Our AI platform enables tremendous pace and capital efficiency as demonstrated by our progress in ~2 years with seed capital—a stark contrast to the typical spend of $100M+ and 7+ years exhibited in the pharmaceuticals / biotech industry. With ~90% of rare diseases having no therapeutic treatment at all, GEn1E is taking a giant swing that will hopefully bring life-saving therapies to the lives of patients in need. The team at GEn1E has decades of experience in drug development and machine learning. We graduated from YCombinator and Stanford-StartX in late 2019. We are based in Palo Alto, CA.

Cofactor uses RNA and Predictive Immune Modeling to build better biomarkers and improve patient outcomes. Led by Jarret Glasscock and a group of expert human genome scientists,Cofactor has built a new category of diagnostic technology powered by unique and powerful RNA data models built on terabytes of data. The team recently had their technology validation peer-reviewed by the organizations that set standards for diagnostic technology (CAP, AMP) and is publishing in the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics. In addition, the team made news when Cancer Physicians who sit on the committee for patient treatment guidelines (NCCN) presented a clinical study using Cofactor’s technology showing superiority in predicting the patients who will respond to immunotherapy. This initial application is an acute problem recognized widely in the rapidly developing immunotherapy industry and represents north of a billion dollar TAM. After a number of recent key milestones, the team is taking the technology more broadly to 50% of cancers diagnosed in the US. Current investors include Menlo Ventures, DCVC, and Ascension Ventures (this last investor representing the funding arm for 13 National U.S. Healthcare Systems).

Output Biosciences is pioneering Biologically-Aware Generative AI to finally understand complex biological systems. Our new generative AI architecture can handle the extremely long, nonlinear, fragmented, and high dimensional data of biological systems. We are building Large Biological Models that can generate breakthrough medicines and transform the way we diagnose, treat and prevent disease.

Technology finds information and delivers physical products to us almost instantly. mRNA does the same for biology. At HelixNano, we see a world where treatments are cheap, progress is decentralized, and you can modify biology at the push of a button. By focusing on mRNA improvements from first principles, we’re getting there faster than we thought. Experiments that used to take months or years can be done in weeks and cost thousands instead of millions. The rate limiting step for our progress is now scientific curiosity. Rigid hierarchies and top-down decisions will miss the magic. Some of our most powerful technologies started out as side projects of junior team members. At HelixNano, every individual scientist can have a massive impact on the company's direction. And the more diverse our team, the faster we’ll find the really cool ideas. We've started rolling out some of our new tech — moving a COVID-19 vaccine candidate for the immunocompromised towards the clinic, and testing an intervention with massive environmental impact. But we’re scientists at heart, and team focus is solidly on the horizon.

Tamarind Bio is a website and API which allows scientists to use computational biology tools at scale using a simple interface. On Tamarind, scientists can use ML models like AlphaFold to design and simulate molecules by simply selecting inputs instead of or setting up a high performance computing environment or dealing with DevOps. Our tools are used by thousands researchers in large pharma companies, top biotechs, and academic institutions. We currently focus on models in protein design and engineering, including for antibodies/therapeutics and enzymes. Get in touch at founders@tamarind.bio

Altay develops small molecule drugs to treat chronic liver diseases like liver fibrosis and liver cancer. Our co-founder Dr. Osman Ozes, led the first drug development program for Esbriet (Pirfenidone), resulting in the first FDA approved therapy for lung fibrosis. Esbriet is now a $1 billion/year drug and has already made over $6 billion in revenue. With a team that has over 70+ years of small molecule drug development experience, we intend to do the same with chronic liver diseases, which affects over 20 million Americans and represents a market size of over $30 billion. We know we are well positioned for success because we have shown excellent pre-clinical mouse data in several liver fibrosis models using our novel small molecule. We demonstrate a reduction in fibrosis with our drug, but more significantly, we show a reversal in fibrotic tissue back to normal tissue. With our current developmental strategy, we hope to have a clinic-ready compound by the end of 2021 and be in phase I clinical trials by mid of 2022.

Isabl has developed software that can analyze the entire genome of cancer patients. Today, when people get cancer, they get a genetic test of their tumor that analyzes only a few possible mutations. With Isabl, you run the tumor through an Illumina sequencer and get the whole genome, then our software is able to analyze all the mutations. Our breakthrough technology provides unprecedented clarity into tumor biology to aid treatment planning. This opens up opportunities for precision diagnostics, disease surveillance and biomarker discovery.

Ansa Biotechnologies is developing a new way to make DNA that will be faster, cleaner, and more accurate than existing methods. Currently, DNA is manufactured via a chemical method that has remained mostly unchanged for 35 years. Our enzyme-based approach promises to dramatically accelerate innovation in biological research and biotechnology, including therapeutics, diagnostics and biomanufacturing.

Ochre Bio is a biotechnology company developing RNA medicines for chronic liver diseases.

We use AI and high-throughput mouse studies to discover therapeutics that modify neural activity in the brain. The initial focus is on epilepsies associated with autism and Parkinson’s disease with the potential to expand to any neurological disorder underlined by a dysfunction in neural activity. Our R&D is guided by AI models trained on high-density multimodal mouse data generated in-house. We are 3 Oxford-trained neuroscientists supported by an experienced SAB from Harvard, Science Corp (ex-Neuralink), EPFL, Meta, and UCL. In 1.5 months since landing in SF, we went from nothing to (1) opening and operating an animal lab in South SF, (2) obtaining a proof-of-concept in mice, (3) building a multimodal AI model that directs our screening approach and (4) submitting two provisional patents; all while utilizing less than 50% of our YC funding. 

Delineate is building AI agents to design better clinical trials faster. This is a $10B dollar market, where saving even 1 day along the process is equal to $1-5M in revenue potential. We process existing clinical trial research into specialized datasets saving scientists months of effort. Delineate is working with two of the largest pharmaceutical companies. With one of our customers, we are helping them get to the next phase of trials faster by creating the largest dataset on a drug class ever constructed.

Reticular helps pharma companies discover drugs with AI models like AlphaFold by making them steerable, just like you can prompt LLMs. Today, limited validation data means companies spend millions on failed experiments trying to steer these models through trial and error. We’re piloting our AI interpretability technology with early-stage biotechs and scaling rapidly. Just a week after our pivot, we identified the first interpretable features ever found in protein models, allowing precise control over biological functions. Nithin and John met competing in Biology Olympiads before spending 4 years as roommates at MIT publishing ML/bio research in NeurIPS and Nature. We believe biological models encode far more information than anyone is currently using - our goal is to unlock this potential.

Nanograb is a computational drug discovery company that uses AI to generate the best combination of binders to treat different diseases. Our product allows drugs to be targeted to very specific areas of the body.

Play Health is a perimenopause health platform redefining midlife care for women.  Despite affecting over 30 million women in the U.S. alone, perimenopause remains one of the most overlooked stages in women’s health. The science is complex, the data is sparse, and most existing solutions are either too generic or too narrow to deliver meaningful insights. Women are left navigating life-altering symptoms with little guidance and few tools built specifically for them. Play Health changes that. We combine personalized tracking, at-home hormone testing, and AI-driven analytics to deliver actionable, data-first insights, and build the most advanced longitudinal dataset in perimenopause to date. This unlocks improved health today and enables the discovery of new diagnostics, therapeutics, and standards of care for tomorrow. Play Health is led by successful, second-time, YC founders Andrea Mazzocchi and Ian Miller, with an exit and a unicorn between them.

Labric is building the data layer that makes AI work for science. We capture messy lab data from instruments and tools, clean it, and connect it— so researchers can actually use AI to accelerate discovery.

HistoWiz is an innovative company dedicated to accelerating pathology-based research. HistoWiz provides fast, global access to digital whole-slide images, online collaboration tools, low-cost data management, and experimental pathology expertise. The web-based platform accelerates information exchange among medical scientists and research pathologists. HistoWiz's mission is to fight cancer cooperatively instead of individually by connecting scientists and pathologists for online collaboration. The HistoWiz advantage We help your lab minimize the cost of research and maximize research productivity by providing the most efficient service for scientists to analyze experimental pathology specimens. We believe that scientists should spend their time on results interpretation rather than repetitive tissue cutting. How does it work? HistoWiz accepts formalin-fixed specimens by mail for tissue processing services. To expedite delivery of results and to facilitate global collaboration, HistoWiz offers whole-slide imaging and pathology services, allowing researchers to remotely and instantly view high-magnification images of their specimens via a secure, cloud-based “virtual microscope” on any computer or mobile device without downloading any software or gigabyte-sized files.

Blank Bio builds foundation models that understand RNA, the language of life. Our model powers applications across the entire R&D pipeline, from designing better drugs to running smarter clinical trials. Our first model is state-of-the-art in mRNA property prediction. It simulates costly experiments, helping partners design more effective mRNA medicines faster and cheaper. Our open-source models are being used by Sanofi & GSK. We’re also collaborating with the Arc Institute to bring our RNA embeddings into the next generation of virtual cell models. mRNA design is just the beginning. As the model improves, we’re extending to applications like target ID, novel biomarker discovery, patient stratification, and more. We’ve spent decades applying machine learning to biology across academia (PhDs at the University of Toronto) and industry (Recursion, Deep Genomics, Amazon). Contact us to learn more: founders@blank.bio

Manufacturing pharmaceutical drugs faster and in the USA

Adventris makes cancer vaccines. Our platform solves the problem of targeting poorly immunogenic oncogenes. Our first "off-the-shelf" vaccine targets KRAS, the most common cancer oncogene. In the long run, we envision a world where every adult receives our pan-cancer vaccines annually – preventing the majority of cancer deaths. If you are interested in learning more about our approach to treat and prevent cancer, please reach out to us at contact@adventris.com

Invitris radically simplifies how we create novel biological drugs. Our patent-pending technology platform turns DNA into synthetic proteins and was recently featured in the Science magazine. It makes creating new drugs >10,000x more efficient at <100x lower costs of material. Our killer application is enabling the newest generation of synthetic bacteriophages to combat antibiotic-resistant infections, which are threatening to cause more deaths than all cancers combined.

Arpeggio Bio is a pioneering pharmaceutical company that develops drugs targeting transcription factors using AI and high-throughput RNA-sequencing. With $20M in venture funding, we've targeted "undruggable" proteins like NRF2, TEAD, and GPX4 where our lead program is rapidly progressing towards a DC for the treatment of IO-resistant melanoma. With partnerships with J&J and FORMA, we've validated our platform in rare disease and inflammation with a significant Phase I success.

Cell and gene therapy promises to one day cure any disease; Modulari-T’s Platform produces the tools to fulfill that promise. Modulari-T has designed a new family of synthetic genes that can reprogram cells to better sense their environment and modify their behavior accordingly. This can be used to engineer immune cells to efficiently recognize and kill cancer cells or to create stem cells able to regenerate any tissue. Modulari-T looks to expand its technology to reach every area of cell therapy and become the platform of reference for cell engineering.

Manage data & analyses with an open-source framework. Collaborate across dry & wetlab in a distributed hub. Enable learning at scale through API-first access.

Pando is an AI-driven synthetic biology company revolutionizing enzyme engineering for the pharmaceutical industry. Our ultra-high-throughput screening platform screens 1000-fold more enzymes 75% faster and 80% cheaper than traditional methods. This empowers our generative AI to efficiently optimize enzymes across multiple properties, delivering high-performing, tailored enzymes that reduce costs and enhance efficiency.

Reshape Biotech builds lab robots that automate the everyday tasks of microbiologists, from filling plates to analyzing images. Other companies try to sell “one lab robot that does everything”. But those robots become so complicated that they sit unused on the shelf. We build one robot for each function, which makes them easy to use.

We have built a platform that enables drug discovery and development for previously undruggable genome regulators ("the regulome"). We accomplish this by moving drug discovery out of artificial systems where regulome proteins fail to function properly, and back into live human cells. Our technology combines innovations in automated cell processing, next-gen proteomics, and advanced data analytics to measure a drug's effect on the entire regulome in one experiment.

We're making every therapeutically valuable emotion available on demand in pharmaceutical form. Our Osmanthus platform is an ensemble of AI models that synthesize the world’s largest datasets of psychoactive pharmacology and phenomenology, quantitatively pinpointing the combination of neurotransmitter receptor activity that underlies various emotional as well as cognitive and perceptual states. Our lead program MSD-001 is designed to be rapid-acting and produce heightened emotional and cognitive flexibility without hallucinations. MSD-001 is currently in human trials, and will be the base ingredient for multiple drug combination "emotions in a bottle" such as empathy, awe, clarity, or beauty.

Catena’s technology lets us attach any two proteins together using an enzyme and the native amino acids tyrosine and cysteine within target proteins. It is a true platform technology because it enables the joining of any two soluble proteins together with minimal engineering and without restrictions due to protein size or complexity. Our work has already been used to modify cancer specific antibodies, CRISPR proteins and even cell surfaces. Our ability to produce modular protein therapeutics in a fraction of the time allows for true library creation across the therapeutics spectrum from oncology, vaccines, inflammatory disease and beyond.

Parallel Bio created a human 'immune system in a dish' to discover drugs and immunotherapies more likely to work in patients. Our platform has all of the same elements as a human immune system, meaning you can test drugs and vaccines as if you were testing them in actual patients from the start. The biggest reason why 95% of new drugs fail is that they were tested in mice - but with our human platform, pharma companies will know which drugs will successfully treat patients, speeding up the process and reducing the cost. To date our platform has successfully been used to test 12 drugs, and vaccines against 8 different diseases. The company is founded by Robert DiFazio, a former Stanford R&D director with a PhD in immunology, and Juliana Hilliard, a former System1 Biosciences R&D lead with an MSc in bioengineering, both of whom have led drug discovery programs for years.

Our mission -To ensure current and future generations have access to clean soil, water & air. -To protect and restore earth's beautiful and diverse ecosystems. -To undo the harm of industrial activity on the planet and ensure future industrial activities are more sustainable. Our research -We develop new bio-based solutions that break down and remove toxic chemicals from the environment.  We also develop bioreactor based solutions which remove toxins from industrial production pipelines, ensuring contaminants are never released into the environment. -To do this, we've partnered with Nature. Specifically, we have harnessed the power of one of Nature's smallest but most powerful technologies: enzymes. Enzymes are everywhere. They break down the food in your stomach, remove dirt from your clothes, and make our beer. At BluumBio, we look for enzymes found in bacteria, algae, plants and other living organisms that naturally degrade toxic chemicals. We then make these enzymes work better in the lab and come up with develop new applications for these technologies.

Yemaachi Biotech is diversifying and expanding access to precision cancer diagnostics and therapeutics by collecting and sequencing samples from all across Africa, which is the most genetically diverse population on the planet. We then use this data to either optimize existing diagnostic tests, or help other companies discover new ones. With our research activities based in Africa, we are able to leverage access to the most genetically diverse population on the planet to build a first-of-its-kind clinical and molecular knowledgebase on cancer among African people.

Kiwi Biosciences can help 18M Americans suffering from Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) enjoy a normal meal without running to the bathroom two hours later. We develop novel, patent-pending enzymes that break down common digestive triggers in food.

The future of mRNA therapeutics is hampered by manufacturing challenges and unless solved, its exciting potential may never be realised. Sensible enables the next generation of mRNA medicines by turning living cells into factories producing abundant, highly stable and non-immunogenic mRNA in a scalable and cost-effective way.

SFA Therapeutics is creating therapeutically-tailored oral drugs that regulate the immune system; with a focus on autoimmune diseases and cancers that originate from chronic inflammation. There are over 300 million patients who suffer from autoimmune diseases. Our treatment is designed to block the root cause of many of these chronic inflammatory diseases, with safe oral drugs. We have strong clinical data from a phase 1b clinical trial in psoriasis, and human data in pancreatic cancer, uveitis and NASH. we have a total of 9 drugs in our pipeline and 15 patents.

We develop AI models & new assays to create functional, therapeutic proteins.

SynsoryBio is creating next generation, protein therapeutics that sense where they are in the body and only activate at diseased tissue. This technology platform has the potential to expand the therapeutic window of highly potent drugs and apply to many diseases such as cancer and autoimmune disorders.

Rosebud Biosciences accelerates drug development by screening drugs against organoids (micro-organs) that have the same gene mutations as the patients. We partner with therapeutics companies to screen their drugs, and we perform our own drug discovery for rare diseases that have no existing treatments. Our organoids are also fetal-like and enable discovery of novel drug targets for pediatric diseases. This technology was validated at Stanford, published in a prestigious journal, and has already led to the discovery of a drug target in a pediatric heart disease that could not have been found using traditional disease models.

Engage Bio is developing mRNA immunotherapies to defeat cancer. Our founders have deep experience in immunotherapy development, including four drugs in the clinic, and in building mRNA therapeutics platforms. Our approach is to provide cancer cells with instructions to make and gradually release our drugs within solid tumors. This local therapy allows us to eliminate tumors while sparing healthy distant tissues.

Brown Foods is a Stanford, Rice University and IIT Delhi alumni venture building the next-generation of food products. They are creating UnReal Milk- lab based, clean milk - extremely sustainable 'real milk' but made without any cows. Unlike any other option in the USD 22 billion dairy alternatives market today, it will be exactly similar to cow’s milk in terms of nutritional profile, taste, texture and could also be processed into butter, cheese and ice creams. They envision to disrupt the USD 700 billion conventional dairy market by giving the world its 1st 'cow free' real milk option, reducing the carbon footprint of milk by over 90% while being completely cruelty-free.

ACX is developing a new standard for precision agriculture technologies by providing sustainable, eco-friendly alternatives to chemical pesticides. Our mission is to transform agriculture through sustainable biological crop protection that increases yields while safeguarding the environment, farmers, and consumers.