Short answer: Dov Gertz says Converge Bio, founded a year and ten months ago with $33 million raised and 40 people, is a frontier AI lab training foundation models on DNA, RNA, proteins and small molecules for drug developers.
Watch this answer from Episode 32 (starts at 3:15) · Episode 32 notes and transcript
From Episode 32: From DNA to Drugs: How AI Is Rewriting Human Biology, starting at 3:15.
Sam Nadler [3:14]: Obviously, this was just something fun to kick off the conversation, but why don't you tell us what you're doing? It's much more serious than this, and, it's it's a really profound mission.
Dov Gertz [3:25]: First of I have to say it's like a blast from the past, this game. I'm loving it very much. We definitely have to have it in our conferences. We try to do funny things in the conferences, so please do share. Great. So first of all, I see you're on our website. So I'll tell a little bit about the company. We were founded a year and ten months ago. We've raised $33,000,000 so far, backed by likely the best investors in the world, Bessemer Venture Partners, Vintage, TLV Partners, amazing funds. We're a team of 40 folks. In essence, our mission as an organization is to empower drug developers across the world with the best generative AI solutions to accelerate discovery and development. Now let's take a step back into what's happening today in the world of AI for molecular data. So following the explosion of models around analyzing text and chatbots three years ago with ChatGPT, then the scientific community has started to harness the same types of architectures that, caused the explosion of value created, from transformers in text and image and audio today on molecular data, on data from DNA, RNA, proteins, small molecules, so molecular data at large. And as a company, we are a Frontier AI lab training foundation models directly on DNA, RNA, proteins, and small molecules and offering the models that we train through systems that integrate into workflows that our customers already have in designing the molecules and understanding molecular data better. I'll give just a few words around that.
