Warp Sciences, the startup founded by former OpenAI chief product officer Kevin Weil, emerged from stealth on Thursday with $215 million in funding at an $865 million post-money valuation. Warp Sciences is using AI to speed up drug development, and it has not yet shipped a public product.
Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round. IVP, Premji Invest, and Lux Capital also participated.
Warp Sciences is targeting a step in drug development that takes years and hundreds of millions of dollars before a compound ever reaches human trials. The company has not disclosed a product name, a launch date, or further technical detail on how its approach works.
Key facts
- 01Warp Sciences emerged from stealth on Oct. 22 with $215 million at an $865 million post-money valuation.
- 02Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, with IVP, Premji Invest and Lux Capital participating.
- 03Founder Kevin Weil was OpenAI's chief product officer and later head of OpenAI for Science, which built GPT-Rosalind.
- 04Weil left OpenAI on April 17, 2026; in August he was reported to be seeking $150 million at a valuation of at least $750 million.
Kevin Weil spent his OpenAI tenure on both the product and science sides. As chief product officer, he oversaw the teams that turned frontier models into ChatGPT, Codex, and the OpenAI API. He later ran OpenAI for Science, the unit that built GPT-Rosalind, OpenAI's life sciences model.
Weil left OpenAI on April 17, 2026, along with Sora lead Bill Peebles. OpenAI described the departures as part of a consolidation ahead of a possible IPO.
In August, Weil was reported to be raising $150 million at a valuation of at least $750 million for a then-unnamed startup pitched as a way to gather scientific data for AI models. The closed round came in above both figures, at $215 million and $865 million.
Warp Sciences enters a field its founder's former employer is also pushing into. This week OpenAI agreed to acquire Orchestra Bio, a platform that helps biopharmaceutical teams coordinate drug development, and plans to fold its technology and team into its Rosalind life sciences tools.
Warp Sciences has not named any co-founders or disclosed headcount alongside the raise.
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