Ex-OpenAI science chief Kevin Weil launches Warp Sciences with $215m to automate drug-discovery labs

Former OpenAI science chief Kevin Weil has launched Warp Sciences, a US-based chemistry contract research organisation that aims to automate the physical work of drug discovery with robots and AI.

The company announced on Thursday that it has raised a $215 million Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, valuing the start-up at $865 million post-money, with participation from IVP, Premji Invest, Lux Capital, Mayfield, Menlo Ventures and Conviction. Weil unveiled the company on X after it emerged from stealth.

Warp will offer drugmakers lead-optimisation analog synthesis — the laborious process of making and testing hundreds or thousands of variants of a promising molecule — from automated laboratories in the United States. Data from those physical experiments will train Warp’s own AI models, with human chemists wearing cameras and pressure-sensing gloves so robots can learn lab tasks from their movements.

Weil, who left OpenAI’s science unit in April after serving as chief product officer and then vice-president of science, told Bloomberg that some pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to hand sensitive data to contractors in China. “If we want to build more capable AI for science, we need to generate real-world data at scale,” he said.

He is joined by three co-founders: Sol Reisberg (chief scientific officer), previously of Terremoto Biosciences; Manohar Paluri (chief technology officer), formerly of Meta Superintelligence Labs; and DJ Patil (chief operating officer), the White House’s first chief data scientist. The company has about 20 staff and has already bought robotic arms and AI chips.