Warp Sciences raises $215 million for U.S. AI chemistry labs

Warp Sciences, a startup co-founded by former OpenAI executive Kevin Weil, has raised $215 million to build U.S. chemistry labs that combine expert chemists, AI and robotics to make and test molecules for drug research, the company said Thursday.

The San Francisco company emerged from stealth with the round, which was led by Lightspeed, according to a Business Wire release. Premji Invest, Mayfield, IVP, Lux, Conviction, Menlo Ventures, SignalFire and more than a dozen other firms also participated, the release said. The round values Warp at $865 million, TechCrunch reported, citing Weil’s announcement on X. Lightspeed said in a post that it led Warp’s Series A.

Weil, Warp’s co-founder and CEO, most recently served as chief product officer and vice president of science at OpenAI, according to the release. Lightspeed said Weil started and led OpenAI for Science after serving as chief product officer. DJ Patil, Warp’s co-founder and chief operating officer, was a founding executive at Devoted Health and the first U.S. chief data scientist for the White House, the release said.

Warp plans to operate as a U.S.-based chemistry contract research organization, or CRO. Its first service will be lead optimization analog synthesis, making variations of molecules that scientists compare as they search for a drug candidate, according to the release. Chemists will guide experiments as the lab is increasingly automated, with AI models trained on data from physical experiments, the release said.

“If we want to build more capable AI for science, we need to generate real-world data at scale,” Weil said in the release.

Warp said it will not develop drugs of its own. “Our biotech and pharma customers determine which molecules to pursue and retain control of their drug programs,” Patil said in the release.

Why it matters

Warp is betting that where drug chemistry gets done is becoming as important as how fast it gets done. For years, biotech companies have sent the labor-intensive work of synthesizing thousands of molecule variations to contractors in China, such as WuXi AppTec, TechCrunch reported. Lightspeed wrote that Western pharma sends most of its outsourced chemistry offshore, largely to China. Washington is now pushing the other way: the BIOSECURE Act, signed into law in December 2025, set up a framework for restricting federal procurement and funding involving designated biotechnology companies of concern, Warp’s release said. Lightspeed said U.S. companies could take up to eight years to replace offshore partners without disrupting drug programs, citing industry estimates, and that no U.S. provider is built to do the work at that scale. That gap is Warp’s pitch. The company also argues automation can change the cost math: co-founder and chief scientific officer Sol Reisberg said Warp aims to offer that caliber of chemistry in the U.S. without the price premium of U.S. boutique CROs. Whether a startup can match the speed and price of established overseas labs is the open question.

Who has a stake

Investors: Angel investors include Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, OpenAI Chief Research Officer Mark Chen and OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, according to the release.

Drug developers: Biotech and pharma companies that outsource chemistry are Warp’s intended customers. Reisberg said in the release that he worried about protecting intellectual property when working with overseas chemistry partners.

Offshore contract labs: TechCrunch named WuXi AppTec as an example of the China-based contractors that have handled this work. Warp’s stated aim is to keep discovery work in the U.S.

The founders: Besides Weil, Patil and Reisberg, the co-founders include CTO Mano Paluri, a former vice president at Meta Superintelligence Labs and a founding member of FAIR, the release said.

What’s next

Warp is starting with analog synthesis and plans to automate more of its lab over time, according to the release. Lightspeed said Warp later plans to sell predictions about which compounds are worth making, as well as the compounds themselves. Warp is hiring roboticists, AI researchers and chemists, Lightspeed said.