Biodefense company Valthos announced it has closed $30 million in seed financing. The funding round was led by OpenAI Startup Fund, Lux Capital and Peter Thiel-backed Founders Fund. This capital is earmarked to support the development of systems that utilize artificial intelligence to address biological threats.
Valthos develops AI systems that can rapidly characterize biological sequences and design medical countermeasures in real time. The company uses computational methods to create adaptive countermeasures, with the goal of helping government and life sciences organizations respond to emerging threats with precision. With the newly secured financing, Valthos plans to scale its software infrastructure to support government and commercial stakeholders and grow its engineering team.
The company was co-founded by Kathleen McMahon, who previously served as head of Palantir’s life sciences division, and Lux Capital partner Tess van Stekelenburg. The founding team includes engineers from Palantir and DeepMind, along with computational biologists from Stanford’s Arc Institute and MIT’s Broad Institute.
