AI FOR SCIENCE · ON THE RECORD

Anew Labs

Drug discoveryShanghai (offices in San Francisco and Singapore)Founded 2026Website ↗

ByteDance's AI pharmaceutical team, spun out in 2026. Known publicly for Protenix, an open-source AlphaFold3 reproduction; internally it wires structure prediction, generative design, affinity and R&D reasoning into one closed-loop engine, with IL-17 and IL-4R in the pipeline.

Full funding record →On the timeline →People filter →

Research on the record

2026-09-17Anew Labs publishes an agentic drug discovery engine with a wet-lab-validated antibody campaignLevel 4 · Tested in the physical world
2026-04-16Anew Labs presents AI-designed oral small molecules against all three IL-17 dimersLevel 4 · Tested in the physical world
2026-03-15One model from Anew Labs and Tsinghua designs small molecules, peptides and nanobodies against a KRAS pocket, and peptides and small molecules against PCSK9Level 4 · Tested in the physical world

Graded by how far the evidence went, not how good the result is. See the methodology.

Read on AI4S.fyi

2026-09-19AnewDDE: One Conversation Steering Two Rounds of Antibody Design and ExperimentBrief

Direction analysis

AI4S.fyi's own reading of the public record, last checked 2026-09-19.

The claim

Wiring structure prediction, design, affinity and decision reasoning into one engine driven by experimental feedback can substantially cut the experimental search a candidate takes.

What has to hold for this route to work.

The real bottleneck. The team treats the handoffs between two experiments as the constraint: who fixes the epitope, who cuts thousands of candidates to what a bench can absorb, which residues change once measurements return. Those steps are written into one workflow and handed to an agent dispatched in conversation.

What is established. Open-source structure prediction (three preprints, downloadable weights, externally runnable) and one antibody design loop that ran twice with measured SPR data.

What is still a claim. That a closed-loop engine accelerates drug discovery: one undisclosed target, one modality, with functional and developability evaluation listed as next steps and no IND or trial registration.

The chosen product abstraction. Outward, an in-house pipeline; inward, a research interface driven in natural language, closer to a research assistant for scientists than to a fully automated lab.

Read the full analysis →

Also on the timeline

2026-09-16ByteDance's AI drug-discovery unit spins out as Anew Labs and raises $290MCapital

People

Only people the AI4S.fyi record has named: in a round, a timeline entry, commentary, an interview or a sourced role. Not the full team.

Named on AI4S.fyi

Kai LiuFounder2026-09-16 Anew Labs · First outside round · $290M

Funding rounds tracked

Disclosed funding$290M

Latest round$290MFirst outside round · reported · 2026-09-16

2026-09-16First outside round · $290MreportedLed by HSG (formerly Sequoia China), IDG Capital, Hillhouse · With 5Y Capital (co-lead), Gaorong Ventures, Primavera Venture Partners, Boyu Capital, Shanghai Future Industry Fund, Sino Biopharmaceutical (SBP Group, strategic)Stated use: first independent round after the spin-out; team, algorithms and pipeline moved into the new company

Each round links to its line on the funding record, with its source.

Also in Drug discovery on the funding board

The other companies the funding board files under the same field, latest round first. A list of what the record tracks, not a ranking or a market map.

2026-10-29ALLOXSeed · US$10.5M (€9.4M)Measures the effects of thousands of protein mutations at once to map allosteric and other regulatory sites, and builds AI models on that data to find drug-binding spots on hard targets such as protein-protein interactions and transcription factors, for its own small molecules.
2026-10-27Atlas BioSeed · $10MRuns in silico clinical trials, starting in immunology: a foundation model trained on about 2 million RNA readouts from human tissue predicts each virtual patient's response to several treatments and diseases, to help drug developers choose what to take into Phase II.
2026-10-23Pathos AISeries E · $237MLicenses clinical-stage drugs from other companies and develops them itself, using an agent platform (Foundry, earlier PathOS) trained on patient records to choose assets, pick the patients most likely to respond and adjust trials as they run. Its pipeline is in cancer: prostate cancer, multiple myeloma, lung and breast cancer and TROP2/HER3-expressing solid tumours; in October 2026 it began work in Alzheimer's disease with Bristol Myers Squibb and Tempus.
2026-10-23Zhichong PharmaSeries A1 · tens of millions of yuanDevelops new drugs for pets with generative AI, using its own small-molecule and large-molecule design engines (ChemoFetch and OmniFetch), and argues that testing in the target animal closes the loop from design to evidence faster than human drug development can; its programmes are in anti-infectives, chronic disease and ageing.
2026-10-14Gaowei YiyaoPre-A · undisclosed; PEdaily says the company has raised several hundred million yuan so far this yearMines protein-interaction and other high-dimensional biology data with its own models to find drug targets others treat as undruggable, then runs its own small-molecule and antibody programmes. Its GROOVY platform found the target behind GW-01, a Notch-pathway inhibitor now in Phase I; ACUMEN maps pairs of neighbouring cell-surface proteins for bispecifics and NEXUS looks for tumour neoantigens.
2026-10-14Iambic TherapeuticsIPO · $150MDesigns small-molecule cancer drugs with AI structure-prediction models (NeuralPLexer) linked to an automated chemistry and biology lab.

All 37 in this field →

This page compiles what AI4S.fyi has recorded and links each item to its source. It is not a grade of the organization and not its complete history: a blank means the record has not caught up as often as it means nothing happened.