Key facts
- Chai Discovery, an AI drug discovery startup, has raised $400 million.
- The company is now valued at $3.8 billion.
- Investors include OpenAI, Thrive Capital, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, Oak HC/FT, Pfizer, and Eli Lilly.
- Chai Discovery's Chai-2 model can design novel antibodies from scratch with a 20% hit rate.
- The company was founded in 2024.
Chai Discovery, a two-year-old startup focused on using artificial intelligence for drug discovery, has secured $400 million in funding at a valuation of $3.8 billion. The significant investment round, which also saw participation from major pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Eli Lilly, highlights growing investor confidence in AI's potential to accelerate the development of new medicines.
The company's flagship AI model, Chai-2, is designed to create novel antibodies from scratch, a process known as de novo antibody design. Chai reports that its model achieves a hit rate of approximately 20%, a substantial improvement over the roughly 0.1% success rate of previous computational methods, making its AI approximately 200 times more effective at identifying viable drug candidates.
Founded in 2024, Chai Discovery has experienced rapid growth, raising approximately $30 million in seed funding, followed by a $70 million Series A in August 2025, and a $130 million Series B in December 2025 that valued the company at $1.3 billion. The latest funding round nearly triples that valuation.
Notable investors in Chai Discovery include OpenAI, Thrive Capital, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, and Oak HC/FT, alongside pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Eli Lilly. Mikael Dolsten, former Chief Scientific Officer at Pfizer, has joined Chai Discovery's board. The company's trajectory and substantial backing from traditional venture capital and corporate partnerships raise questions about the necessity of blockchain-based solutions like tokens and DAOs in drug discovery, especially when AI and established capital structures are proving highly effective.