Atomic AI is a South San Francisco biotechnology company fusing machine learning with structural biology to unlock RNA drug discovery. Its platform pairs in-house wet-lab chemical-mapping data with deep learning models - including ATOM-1, a foundation model for RNA structure, and PARSE, its RNA structure exploration platform - to find structured, ligandable RNA motifs and design selective small molecules and RNA-based medicines for targets long considered undruggable.
Paradigm4 builds scientific data management and analytics software for the life sciences. Its flagship REVEAL platform and SciDB array database let pharma, biotech, and research institutions integrate and analyze massive multimodal datasets - genomics, multi-omics, imaging, clinical records, wearables, and environmental data - to find biomarkers and validate drug targets. Co-founded in 2010 by entrepreneur Marilyn Matz and Turing Award-winning MIT professor Michael Stonebraker, the company is based in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Abhishek Jha is the Co-Founder and CEO of Elucidata, a San Francisco-based AI company making biomedical data AI-ready for drug discovery and pharmaceutical R&D. A trained physical chemist with a PhD from the University of Chicago and postdoctoral work at MIT, he spent years at Agios Pharmaceuticals contributing to four FDA-approved first-in-class therapies before co-founding Elucidata in 2015. Under his leadership, the company has raised over $22.7M in funding, grown to 170 employees, and achieved $22.2M ARR, while evolving from a data-curation platform into an AI company solving out-of-distribution (OOD) problems in biomedical research - work that earned Elucidata recognition as one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in 2024.
Steve Herne is the CEO of Unlearn.AI, a San Francisco-based company building AI-powered digital twin technology to transform how clinical trials are designed and run. With over 25 years of experience across pharmaceutical R&D companies including WCG, Bioclinica, and Covance, Herne joined Unlearn in May 2024 as Chief Commercial Officer before ascending to CEO in September 2024. Under his leadership, Unlearn — backed by $130M+ in venture funding including a $50M Series C led by Altimeter Capital — is pivoting from research-led to commercially-driven product delivery, with its digital twin models now EMA-qualified and adopted by major biopharma companies to reduce placebo arm sizes by up to 38% in pivotal trials.
Andrew Quong is President and CEO of InterVenn Biosciences, a South San Francisco-based precision diagnostics company unlocking the human glycoproteome through AI-powered platforms. With a PhD in Physics and over 30 years spanning national laboratories, academia, and biotech, Quong bridges the physical and computational sciences with clinical medicine. He led InterVenn's development of GlycoKnow Ovarian, a non-invasive blood-based liquid biopsy test for distinguishing ovarian cancer from benign masses, and has steered the company through key commercialization milestones including a $201M Series C raise in 2021.
Ali Madani is the founder and CEO of Profluent, the AI-first protein design company based in Emeryville, California. A machine learning researcher by training, he holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and pioneered the use of large language models to generate functional proteins from scratch - first at Salesforce AI Research as the architect of ProGen, then at Profluent where his team created OpenCRISPR-1, the world's first AI-designed and open-source gene editor, published in Nature in 2025. With $150M in total funding from Bezos Expeditions, Altimeter Capital, Spark Capital, and Insight Partners, Madani is on a mission to make biology programmable - designing proteins that don't exist in nature to solve the biggest challenges in human health, agriculture, and biomanufacturing.
Peyton Greenside is the CEO and co-founder of BigHat Biosciences, a San Mateo-based biotech company she co-founded in 2019 with Mark DePristo. A pioneer of deep learning applied to life science, Greenside combined a PhD in Biomedical Informatics from Stanford, an MPhil from Cambridge, and a BA in Applied Math from Harvard into a singular mission: use machine learning and synthetic biology to design safer, more effective antibody therapeutics faster than anyone thought possible. BigHat's Milliner platform generates thousands of unique antibody designs per week, and the company has raised $174M in total funding with pharma partnerships spanning Amgen, Merck, AbbVie, Johnson & Johnson, and Eli Lilly.
Ankit Gupta is a General Partner at Y Combinator, bringing a rare fusion of academic machine learning research, startup founding, and biotech industry leadership. He co-founded Reverie Labs (YC W18), an AI-driven drug discovery company that raised $31M and was acquired by Ginkgo Bioworks in 2024. A Harvard magna cum laude CS grad who taught three courses and won three Derek Bok Awards, Ankit now helps the next generation of founders navigate the same inflection points he once faced.
Kevin Parker, Ph.D. is the co-founder and CEO of Cartography Biosciences, a South San Francisco-based oncology company using single-cell genomics and AI to map the tumor antigen landscape and build precision immunotherapies. A Harvard and Stanford alumnus who founded the company straight out of his PhD, Parker has raised $124M in total funding, struck a landmark collaboration with Gilead Sciences, received FDA IND approval for his lead drug CBI-1214, and dosed the first patient in a Phase 1 colorectal cancer trial in early 2026 - all before most scientists finish a second postdoc.
Omri Amirav-Drory, Ph.D., is a General Partner at NFX leading NFX Bio, a pre-seed and seed venture fund focused on scientist-founders at the intersection of technology and biology. A former Fulbright Scholar and Stanford postdoc turned biotech entrepreneur, he co-founded Genome Compiler (acquired by Twist Bioscience), launched Tech.Bio, and now backs breakthrough life sciences companies while co-founding Renewal Bio - a longevity company building synthetic embryo-derived tissues to combat aging. His stated mission is ending involuntary death.