The latest artificial intelligence (AI) unicorn is Lila Sciences, a biotechnology startup aiming to accelerate scientific discovery by harnessing cutting-edge AI tools, Bloomberg reported. The company announced it had raised $235 million in Series A funding at a valuation of approximately $1.23 billion.
Lila Sciences, which emerged from stealth mode in March following a $200 million seed round, has developed AI models trained on academic literature across materials science, chemistry, and life sciences. The company is also building AI-driven labs—dubbed “AI science factories”—where automated research conducted by both human scientists and software models is tested, refined, and reintegrated to improve discovery processes.
“If your training input is entirely publicly available data, then one hits a ceiling or phase of diminishing returns,” said Geoffrey von Maltzahn, Lila’s co-founder and chief executive officer, in an interview with Bloomberg. He added that the AI feedback loop enables the company to “discover things that would be slower to impossible to discover with previous paradigms.”
Traditionally, scientific discovery has been a human-driven process, with researchers forming hypotheses, gathering data, running experiments, and refining results—a procedure that can take years. Lila’s approach aims to significantly shorten this timeline, potentially reducing months or even years from the discovery process.
The AI-driven scientific applications sector has been growing rapidly, with companies like Orbital Materials and Isomorphic Labs also developing technologies to accelerate innovation. However, Bloomberg notes that Lila believes its dedicated, automated lab environments will set it apart. Since its inception in 2023, the company claims to have discovered thousands of novel proteins, nucleic acids, chemistries, and materials, with lab-tested results feeding into its AI models.
Although Lila has not yet commercialized any products, von Maltzahn told Bloomberg that external companies have expressed interest in accessing its AI platform. The startup plans to open its platform to selected partners by the end of the year, though he declined to name specific firms.
The new funding round was led by Braidwell and Collective Global, an investment firm co-owned by California pension funds. Existing investors from the seed round—including Cathie Wood’s ARK Venture Fund and General Catalyst—also contributed to the Series A.
Daniel Adamson, co-founder and co-CEO of Collective Global, explained to Bloomberg that Lila’s ability to attract top AI and scientific talent, coupled with its potential to quickly generate new patents and products, made it a compelling investment. “Think of Lila as an IP factory par excellence,” Adamson remarked. “You can optimize your IP creation strategy in a way that people don’t know what’s coming.”
As part of its expansion plans, Lila intends to pit teams of human researchers against its AI models in competitions designed to test whether its system has achieved what it calls “scientific superintelligence.” Von Maltzahn compared the initiative to chess matches between IBM’s Deep Blue and grandmaster Garry Kasparov, where the computer ultimately triumphed in 1997.
With its groundbreaking approach and growing investor support, Lila Sciences is positioning itself at the forefront of AI-driven biotech innovation, Bloomberg concluded.
