# Deniz Kavi

> Deniz Kavi is the co-founder and CEO of Tamarind Bio, a San Francisco company that turns hundreds of complex computational-biology models - AlphaFold, RFdiffusion, OpenFold and more - into a point-and-click web tool and API so scientists can design drug candidates without writing code or wrangling cloud infrastructure. A Stanford computer-science graduate who did computational-biology research and engineered software at Stanford School of Medicine, he started the company in 2023 with co-founder Sherry Liu, went through Y Combinator's W24 batch, and in February 2026 raised a $13.6M Series A led by Dimension Capital. Tamarind now serves 10,000+ scientists, including 8 of the top 20 global pharma companies, and was tapped to run the inference infrastructure behind Eli Lilly's TuneLab 2.0.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Tamarind Bio
- **Organizations:** Tamarind Bio, Y Combinator (W24), Stanford University, Stanford University School of Medicine
- **Nationality:** United States
- **Education:** B.S. Computer Science (with computational biology research), Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar
- **Known for:** Raised a $13.6M Series A (Feb 2026) led by Dimension Capital, with Y Combinator participating, Grew Tamarind Bio 700% in a single year to 10,000+ scientists, Won adoption by 8 of the top 20 global biopharma companies, including Bayer and Boehringer Ingelheim

## Career timeline

- **pre-2023** — Software engineer at Stanford University School of Medicine; computational-biology research at Stanford
- **2023** — Co-founded Tamarind Bio with Sherry Liu
- **2024** — Tamarind Bio accepted into Y Combinator's Winter 2024 (W24) batch
- **2026-02** — Announced $13.6M Series A led by Dimension Capital with Y Combinator participation
- **2026-04** — Tamarind Bio partners with A-Alpha Bio to link AI design with wet-lab validation
- **2026-06** — Tamarind selected to build and operate inference infrastructure for Eli Lilly's TuneLab 2.0

## Achievements

- Raised a $13.6M Series A (Feb 2026) led by Dimension Capital, with Y Combinator participating
- Grew Tamarind Bio 700% in a single year to 10,000+ scientists
- Won adoption by 8 of the top 20 global biopharma companies, including Bayer and Boehringer Ingelheim
- Built a platform offering 200+ molecular-AI models in one interface
- Selected to run inference infrastructure for Eli Lilly's TuneLab 2.0 collaborative platform
- Featured by Forbes as 'The Startup Building An Operating System For Biotech AI'

## Latest updates

- **2026-06** — Tamarind Bio selected to build and operate the inference infrastructure for Eli Lilly's TuneLab 2.0 AI/ML drug-discovery platform.
- **2026-04** — Tamarind Bio partnered with A-Alpha Bio to connect AI-driven antibody design with high-throughput experimental validation.
- **2026-02** — Announced $13.6M Series A led by Dimension Capital; platform passes 10,000+ scientists and 200+ models.

## Links

- Website: https://www.denizkavi.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deniz-kavi
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/kavi_deniz
- GitHub: https://github.com/denizkavi

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/deniz-kavi
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-12