Anew Labs: ByteDance's AI drug-discovery team becomes its own company, raising $290M from outside

Who supplies the research · ByteDance. The team's public models all came out of ByteDance: the Protenix structure model was released in January 2025 under "ByteDance AML AI4Science Team", and its v1 and v2 under ByteDance Seed.[4] Anew's site now presents Protenix, SeedFold and its own AnewFold as one suite.[6] Several Anew papers in early 2026 carry both "ByteDance AI Drug Discovery" and a Singapore entity, Anew Therapeutics, with co-authors from Tsinghua University's Institute for AI Industry Research and others.[5] The leads of two of those models did not come along: outlets report that Wenzhi Xiao (Protenix) and Quanquan Gu (SeedFold) left to found companies before the spin-out.[9][10]

Who holds the IP · The assets moved; how is not yet public. 36Kr's Intelligent Emergence column reported that the core team, algorithms, platform and existing pipeline would "enter the new entity as a whole", with ByteDance keeping control.[1] Yet the model code still sits under ByteDance's GitHub with ByteDance copyright marks; Protenix's code and earlier weights are open under Apache 2.0, while the v2 weights belong to an unnamed "rights holder" and are not open.[4] Whether the move was an assignment, a licence or assets exchanged for equity is not public.

Who gives the lab and equipment · Compute comes from ByteDance's Volcano Engine, on terms not stated.[1][2] The company's site lists addresses in Shanghai, Singapore and the US.[6] Where wet-lab work is done is not stated: the careers page asks the head of medicinal chemistry to manage "the internal medicinal chemistry team and external CROs", and the technical report's antibody expression and binding tests do not say who ran them.[7][8]

Who puts in the first money, and on what terms · As reported: $290M, led by HSG, IDG Capital and Hillhouse, with 5Y Capital as co-lead and Gaorong, Primavera, Boyu, the Shanghai Future Industry Fund and Sino Biopharmaceutical (strategic) taking part.[2][3][13] Reuters, citing two unnamed people, says ByteDance keeps 56%; whether it put in new cash is not public.[2] The only investor speaking on the record is Sino Biopharm's Cao Fenze, who says the company wants to work with technology companies including ByteDance to bring frontier technology into real drug pipelines.[11] Kai Liu spent seven years in venture capital at IDG Capital and Fire Stone before ByteDance; IDG is one of this round's leads.[2]

Who joins the company · The team moved over as a whole, about 50 core members per outlets.[1][3] Kai Liu leads it.[6][8] In May 2026 the site listed 36 core members and three scientific advisers, among them Liu Yongjun, a former president of Innovent Biologics; the current site has taken the list down.[12] In June the structure-prediction team was merged into Kai Liu's drug team and "a few people left".[1]