Former OpenAI Exec Kevin Weil Launches Warp Sciences With $215M for AI Robot Chemistry Labs

Launch and funding

Former OpenAI science lead Kevin Weil announced on X on Oct 22 that his new company, Warp Sciences, has come out of stealth with a $215 million Series A at an $865 million post-money valuation. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from IVP, Mayfield, Lux Capital, Premji Invest and Menlo Ventures.

Automating wet labs

Warp Sciences aims to automate wet-lab work in drug discovery with AI and robots: chemists wearing cameras and pressure-sensing gloves run experiments, generating real experimental data to train AI, so robots can eventually synthesize and test thousands of molecular variants around the clock.

Context

Such medicinal-chemistry work has for years been outsourced to companies like China's WuXi AppTec; Warp wants to bring the capacity back to the US and reduce geopolitical supply-chain risk. Weil previously led AI-for-science efforts at OpenAI, according to TechCrunch.