Kai Liu

Researcher · Founder

Now Founder, Anew Labs

Latest on AI4S.fyiFunding · Sep 16 · founderAnew Labs · First outside round · $290M

Affiliations

Current

Founder · Anew Labssince 2026thenextweb.com ↗

Also named in the companies' announcements: ByteDance

Current roles come from these dated records, not from the bio below. Each links the page it was read from.

About

Kai Liu is the founder of Anew Labs, the AI drug-discovery team spun out of ByteDance in 2026. He joined ByteDance in 2021 and led the team from its formation that year. Before that he spent seven years in venture capital at IDG Capital and Fire Stone Investment.

Read on 2026-09-29; for current roles see Affiliations above. Read at: eu.36kr.com ↗ · thenextweb.com ↗

Founded

Anew LabsDrug discovery · 2026 · 1 round on record · disclosed $290M · First outside round $290M
Background: ByteDance (led its AI drug-discovery team from 2021); earlier IDG Capital and Fire Stone Investment (as the company's own announcements put it)
Backed byHSG (formerly Sequoia China)IDG Capital Hillhouse

On the timeline

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 PCSK9

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