Participated · Equity · Apr 2024

Xaira Therapeutics builds generative protein-design models—inspired by work at the University of Washington’s Institute of Protein Design—to design molecular structures that can be made in three-dimensional, physical form. The company says recent breakthroughs in AI have put it at an inflection point and that it is ready to begin developing drugs that were previously impossible to make. Xaira has been operating in stealth for about six months and declined to specify when it expects a first drug to enter human trials. The startup emphasizes that generative AI applications in biology are still in the early innings and that biology is data-poor, requiring creation of bespoke datasets to train models. Financially, Xaira launched with an unusually large capital base to pursue long-term drug development and model creation, having been funded with $1 billion by its backers.