Paul Grayson and the Art of Starting Again

In February 2011, Fate Therapeutics announced that Paul Grayson was leaving to form a new company. It was an unusually direct description of an executive departure. There was a completed chapter, and there was the next beginning, waiting for its paperwork. Grayson had been president and CEO since April 2008. He would become president and CEO of Bird Rock Bio that June.

Read across his career and that departure begins to look like a useful opening scene. Aurora Biosciences. Senomyx. Fate. Bird Rock Bio. Tentarix. Then Radionetics. The company names change; the recurring work involves getting people, money, and a research enterprise into a workable arrangement. A résumé normally travels in a straight line. This one keeps arriving at another starting line.

Grayson is now President and CEO of Radionetics Oncology and chairman of Skye Bioscience. His Tentarix tenure ran from July 2020 to November 2023. For anyone who remembers him through that company’s emergence, the next chapter has already been underway for several years.

A résumé with a reset button

His education put two disciplines together: biochemistry and computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles, followed by an MBA at the University of California, Irvine. The combination is a small but distinctive detail in a career spent crossing between research organizations and the business arrangements that sustain them.

He was part of Aurora Biosciences’ founding management team and a founding chairman, president, and CEO at Senomyx. The latter put him in the orbit of consumer-food businesses. A research company could have customers whose products sat on supermarket shelves; its commercial relationships could involve Kraft, Nestlé, or Coca-Cola. Grayson’s early dealmaking history included those names alongside larger research and pharmaceutical businesses.

Aurora was later acquired by Vertex, and Senomyx by Firmenich. Years afterward, Bird Rock Bio would become part of Skye. Those different corporate destinations give the founding roles a longer perspective: a company can continue into another owner’s organization, carrying its work beyond the chapter in which a founder first helped establish it.

There was venture investing, too. Before joining Fate, he had been a managing director at Sanderling Ventures. In 2008, he arrived at Fate alongside John Mendlein, who became executive chairman. They had both worked at Aurora. The new appointment brought a familiar professional connection into a new company, an early instance of the human continuity visible across Grayson’s career.

When he left Fate in 2011, his comment began, “I am proud of the outstanding organization”. The noun is revealing in its modest way. An organization consists of colleagues, responsibilities, and decisions that must survive the departure of any one person. His next company, Bird Rock Bio, would occupy a much longer stretch of his working life: June 2011 through its acquisition by Skye in August 2023.

The dates also resist a tidy procession of one job ending before the next begins. Bird Rock Bio’s executive chapter overlapped with Tentarix. Skye’s account lists a Versant partnership from November 2019 to July 2020; the Tentarix launch later identified him as a venture partner. Reading those roles separately preserves the texture of the career. Investment work, operating work, and founding work appear alongside one another, with different responsibilities and sometimes different calendars. A single line beneath a name has a considerable amount of work to do.

The company already had thirty colleagues

Tentarix entered public view in October 2021 with a $50 million Series A co-led by Versant Ventures and Samsara BioCapital. Grayson was president and CEO, and the launch announcement also identified him as a Versant venture partner. More than thirty people were already assembled across San Diego and Vancouver. The public beginning came with an organization attached.

The names help explain the scale of the undertaking. Stephen Demarest was chief scientific officer. Margaret Karow was chief development officer. Paul Kang handled corporate development. Alyssa Levin was chief financial officer, having previously held that position at Bird Rock Bio. These were distinct responsibilities carried by distinct people, rather more useful to a working company than a flattering adjective about its founder.

In May 2022, Tentarix added another layer. Donald Santel and Tom Bumol joined the board, Santel becoming chairperson. Brady Johnson arrived as senior vice president of finance and operations. A scientific advisory board brought together Bumol, Brian Kuhlman, and John Teijaro. The company was extending the circle of people responsible for challenging, financing, and guiding its work.

“we continue to strengthen our leadership and advisory teams”Paul Grayson · May 2022

That sentence is the sort a reader can skim past in an appointment announcement. Put beside the appointments themselves, it acquires substance. Finance, operations, independent board leadership, and specialist advice were being filled out in parallel. The CEO’s job included making room for other people’s authority.

A partnership with three doors

In August 2023, Tentarix announced three collaborations with Gilead. The agreement combined upfront payments and an equity investment totaling $66 million. It also gave Gilead the option to acquire up to three selected Tentarix subsidiaries for $80 million apiece. Each subsidiary would contain programs developed under the collaborations.

It is an arrangement worth pausing over. The business relationship had several possible destinations, with a separate acquisition decision attached to each subsidiary. The architecture of the agreement was part of the story. An outside partner could commit resources while leaving later ownership decisions contingent on how the work developed.

September brought a $35 million Series B led by Amplitude Ventures, with participation from Gilead and the two founding investors. Tentarix reported $132 million in capital from equity and upfront partnership payments since inception. The categories matter: that total combined different kinds of funding. Adding every number in every announcement would produce a splendidly confident spreadsheet and a rather unreliable answer.

Amplitude’s account added a longer view of the relationship. Its team said it had been intrigued by Tentarix’s founders for almost ten years and had built a strong relationship with management over the previous three. The financing announcement occupied a day on the calendar. The acquaintance behind it had taken considerably longer.

Another desk, another beginning

Grayson began as Radionetics’ president and CEO in November 2023. The appointment was announced publicly in January 2024 alongside a $52.5 million Series A. Frazier Life Sciences, 5AM Ventures, and DCVC Bio led the round. Crinetics Pharmaceuticals and GordonMD Global Investments participated. Total funding announced at that point was $82.5 million.

Here was another familiar combination: an executive appointment, a group of investors, and the means to carry an organization into its next stage. The experience he brought was described in terms of business strategy and a career spanning more than twenty-five years. He was joining a company with its own specialists, backers, and existing work.

Levin now appears on Radionetics’ leadership roster as chief financial officer. Her presence gives the sequence from Bird Rock Bio through Tentarix to Radionetics a recognizable human thread. A company name can disappear from the top of an executive biography while a working relationship continues into the next chapter.

The billion-dollar conditional

On July 1, 2024, Radionetics announced its strategic agreement with Lilly. Radionetics received $140 million upfront. Lilly obtained an exclusive right to acquire the company for $1 billion upon conclusion of an exercise period. During that period, Radionetics would continue building its own pipeline.

The distinction carries the story. One payment had been made. A larger acquisition remained a contractual possibility. The announcement described the terms of a relationship with a future decision built into it. Calling the whole arrangement a completed billion-dollar sale would erase the very feature that made its structure interesting.

Placed beside Tentarix’s Gilead agreement, the Radionetics deal shows another use of a familiar business instrument: the option to acquire. At Tentarix, options attached to selected subsidiaries. At Radionetics, the right concerned the company. The specific terms changed what the partner could own later and what work would continue in the meantime.

Grayson’s career makes these distinctions worth reading. Founding and financing are followed by choices about partnership and ownership. The executive’s story continues inside those choices, well after the launch photograph and well before any eventual transaction.

There are lawyers in this chapter, too: Cooley advised Radionetics, while Ropes & Gray advised Lilly. Their appearance in the announcement adds a practical footnote to the company-building story. A partnership of this kind has to become an agreement that assigns rights and responsibilities. The price gives a reader something memorable. The provisions give the two businesses something they can act on.

The chair has a different job

Skye appointed Grayson chairman effective October 25, 2024. He had joined its board following the Bird Rock Bio acquisition the previous year. Punit Dhillon remained CEO and a board member. Skye described the change as a step toward greater independence between board leadership and management, giving the appointment a specific governance purpose.

In May 2026, shareholders re-elected Grayson to the board for a term ending at the 2027 annual meeting. His present working life therefore spans executive leadership at Radionetics and oversight at Skye. The titles describe different obligations, connected by experience accumulated across the same sequence of companies.

There is no single company name that contains this career. Tentarix provides a substantial chapter, with colleagues recruited, investors assembled, and partnerships negotiated. Bird Rock Bio provides a longer one. Radionetics supplies the current executive role. Follow the handoffs between them and Grayson’s story becomes an account of how one person keeps taking responsibility for another beginning.