Xaira Therapeutics, an AI-enabled drug discovery and development company, announced its launch with more than $1 billion in capital.  

The biotechnology company is a joint incubation by ARCH Venture Partners and Foresite Labs, the lead investors in the funding round. 

Lux Capital, Two Sigma Ventures, F-Prime, Rsquared, SV Angel, Menlo Ventures, Sequoia Capital, NEA, the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI), Byers Capital, and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated in the round. 

WHAT IT DOES

Xaira uses machine learning research, data generation models and therapeutic product development to create an AI-enabled platform for drug discovery and development across multiple modalities. It will focus on targets that are traditionally difficult to drug. 

The company consists of a group of researchers who developed RFdiffusion and RFantibody models for protein and antibody design. The team will advance these models to connect biological targets and engineered molecules related to human disease. 

"Driven by growing data sets and new methods, there has been accelerating progress in artificial intelligence and its applications to medicine, biology and chemistry, including seminal work from David Baker’s lab at the Institute for Protein Design," Dr. Vikram Bajaj, CEO of Foresite Labs and managing director of Foresite Capital, said in a statement. 

"In starting Xaira, we have brought together incredible multidisciplinary talent and capabilities at the right time to reimagine our entire approach, from drug discovery to clinical development."

MARKET SNAPSHOT

The California-based company is led by CEO Dr. Marc Tessier-Lavigne, who formerly served as Genentech's chief scientific officer and was the president of Rockefeller University and Stanford University. 

Tessier-Lavigne resigned from Stanford University last August after controversy arose over research misconduct pertaining to twelve scientific research papers he coauthored.

The university launched a formal investigation, which concluded that he had no knowledge of the fraud found in his lab's scientific papers but that "there may have been opportunities to improve laboratory oversight and management."    

Other members of Xaira's executive team include co-founder Dr. Hetu Kamisetty, formerly of Meta and the Institute for Protein Design; Dr. Arvind Rajpal, who worked in large molecule drug discovery at Genentech; and Dr. Don Kirkpatrick, Interline Therapeutics' former chief technology officer and former director at Genentech.