Lila Sciences, a Boston-based start-up, has emerged from stealth mode with a substantial $200 million in seed funding, aiming to revolutionize scientific research through advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous laboratories.
The funding round was led by Flagship Pioneering and included notable investors such as General Catalyst, March Capital, ARK Venture Fund, Altitude Life Science Ventures, Blue Horizon Advisors, the State of Michigan Retirement System, Modi Ventures, and a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA).
Lila Sciences aims to develop a ‘scientific superintelligence’ platform that integrates AI with robotics and automation to accelerate discoveries across various scientific domains, including life sciences, chemistry, and materials science.
“For all of human history, the method for scientific exploration has been steadfast: we predict, test, learn, create. Yet for all the progress we have made, we still understand only a fraction of the rules that govern the physical world,” said Noubar Afeyan, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering and Co-Founder and Chairman, Lila Sciences.
“With Lila, our hypothesis is that by scaling experimentation, we can unlock emergent abilities and enable discoveries that remain hidden at smaller scales. Lila represents an ambitious undertaking that we believe will accelerate science with enormous benefit to society.”
Lila’s Autonomous Science platform, guided by human expertise, is built to scale and optimize experimentation across various scientific fields. By integrating generative AI with adaptable, scalable, and autonomous AI science units, the platform has, within just a few years of development, surpassed both human and existing AI-powered benchmarks in multiple domains, demonstrating its advanced capabilities.
Geoffrey von Maltzahn, Ph.D., Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Lila Sciences and General Partner, Flagship Pioneering, emphasized the company’s mission to achieve scientific superintelligence. He stated, “Lila’s mission to responsibly achieve Scientific Superintelligence is born out of the belief that this is the most important opportunity of our time, and that the leader in this pursuit will be the entity that runs the scientific method at the largest scale, speed and intelligence,”
The leadership team includes renowned geneticist George Church, Ph.D., as Chief Scientist; Andrew Beam, Ph.D., as Chief Technology Officer; Kenneth Stanley, Ph.D., as Senior Vice President; Rafael Gómez-Bombarelli, Ph.D., as Chief Science Officer of Materials; and Christopher Fussell as President of Operations.
Lila’s Autonomous Science platform has already demonstrated groundbreaking achievements across multiple scientific domains. The company has developed large language models (LLMs) with state-of-the-art reasoning capabilities to tackle critical scientific challenges and intelligence benchmarks.
It has also generated optimized genetic medicine constructs that surpass commercially available therapeutics in effectiveness. Lila has discovered and validated hundreds of novel antibodies, peptides, and binders for a wide range of therapeutic targets.
In the field of sustainable energy, the company has engineered unique non-platinum group metal catalysts for green hydrogen production at a significantly lower cost than existing commercial catalysts. Lila has designed advanced materials for industrial-scale carbon capture, offering superior capacity, thermal stability, and kinetic binding compared to leading market solutions.
In its developmental phase, Lila Sciences has achieved notable milestones, such as developing large language models with advanced reasoning capabilities, generating optimal genetic medicine constructs, discovering novel antibodies and peptides, and designing new materials for industrial-scale carbon capture.
“To achieve this, we must solve the hard problems to allow AI to autonomously and in a scalable manner run each step from AI models generating an idea to reducing it to practice with robotics and automation. We’ve made some incredible progress in only a few years and are at the very beginning of this important mission.” Geoffrey added.
The company plans to collaborate with partners across the life and material sciences industries to address challenges in human health and sustainability, aiming to accelerate scientific progress beyond current limitations.
Lila Sciences intends to use the seed funding to expand its AI platform, autonomous labs, and infrastructure to support rapid scaling, reflecting a significant investment in the future of AI-driven scientific research.
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