Zak Doric

Investment Partner @a16z bio+health 🧬

[Zak Doric @zakdoric]

Biomni was early to a category that now feels obvious

today, @phylo_bio feels prescient again with its model-agnostic approach, as frontier model access gets harder for bio use cases and frontier labs move closer to developing drugs themselves

biopharma companies will increasingly need leading bio-native agentic capabilities that aren’t locked to any single model provider, and can fully leverage open-source models

try Biomni Lab here: https://t.co/mjspN9HX6j

kudos @KexinHuang5, @YuanhaoQ, @jure, and team on the Science publication!

[Kexin Huang @KexinHuang5]

Today, we're excited to share that Biomni is published in @ScienceMagazine.

Biomedical research is still fragmented, manual, and difficult to scale. In this work, we introduce Biomni - the first general-purpose biomedical AI agent with an integrated biology environment that can reason, plan, and execute end-to-end scientific workflows.

We show that, with the right environment and harness, AI can automate large-scale omics analyses, orchestrate laboratory robotics, optimize molecular properties, and even train new AI models for biology.

We also introduce a reinforcement learning recipe for continually improving biomedical AI agents, enabling open-source models to achieve frontier-level performance.

It's surreal to look back. We started the Biomni project in early 2024, when agentic AI was still nascent. It is exciting to see tens of thousands of biologists collaborating with agents every day to accelerate science.

Try Biomni: https://t.co/Pzm8TVlkNA
Read more: https://t.co/pRstxzPKDi

This work is not possible without this truly inter-disciplinary team: @serena2z @hcwww_ @YuanhaoQ Minta Lu, Ryan Li, @yusufroohani Lin Qiu @shiyi_c98 Gavin Junze Di @rickwierenga @kavi_deniz Sherry @TianweiShe Shruti Jennefer Xin Zhou @MWheelerMD Jon Bernstein @MengdiWang10 @PengHeAtlas @zhou_jingtian @SnyderShot @lecong Aviv Regev @jure

@StanfordAILab @genentech @phylo_bio @arcinstitute @UW @berkeley_ai @RetroBio_ @tamarindbio @Princeton @UCSF

[Gabriele Corso @GabriCorso]

Today, we are excited to announce a major partnership with @GSK to deploy the latest Boltz models across GSK’s research organization!

[Gabriele Corso @GabriCorso]

Boltz has been integrated as a first-party plugin within @OpenAI Codex!

You can now start designing proteins and small molecules, predict structures, affinities, and other properties without leaving the Codex app!

[Gabriele Corso @GabriCorso]

Very excited to announce our new partnership with Takeda! Takeda has been one of the most extensive and sophisticated users of our open-source models, and those models have already made a meaningful impact across multiple discovery programs. This partnership builds on that foundation, giving Takeda’s teams access to our latest proprietary models, pipelines, and infrastructure to further advance their discovery work! 🚀

[Zak Doric @zakdoric]

I'm all for more @boltz_bio x @phylo_bio collabs 🚀

[Phylo @phylo_bio]

Molecular design agents just got a major upgrade.

We’ve partnered with @boltz_bio to bring frontier molecular design into Biomni Lab: BoltzProt-1 for protein binder design with nearly 3x higher hit rates, BoltzMol-1 for validated small-molecule hit finding, and scalable API inference built for agents.

To help teams get started, we’re giving $50K in Boltz API credits to 100 Biomni Lab users.

Sign up here: https://t.co/r94ClcPBKf
Read the blog: https://t.co/dqnGI5hdLj

[Zak Doric @zakdoric]

Boltz update just dropped:

New SOTA models for small molecule and protein design (BoltzMol-1, BoltzProt-1), now available via API and callable from your favorite agentic platforms (Claude Code, Phylo, Benchling, etc).

Wild to watch the AI drug discovery stack become agent-native! Congrats to the @boltz_bio team on a monster release

[Gabriele Corso @GabriCorso]

Big news from Boltz - our biggest update yet! 🚀
Today we’re releasing two new state-of-the-art models for protein and small molecule design with extensive wet lab validation and a new API to run all of our models on scalable GPUs wherever you (or your agents) work! 🔥

[Tech Week @Techweek_]

Happening now! @MassBio hosted founders and industry leaders for a #BOSTechWeek showcase, led by @EliLillyandCo, @zakdoric of @a16z, @KexinHuang5 of @phylo_bio, and @inductive_bio, as they explore cutting-edge AI biotech tools. Next, a16z portfolio companies showcase how cutting-edge AI tools bring speed and system to science. 🔬

[Zak Doric @zakdoric]

If you can't make it - do check out https://t.co/L5w52a1xkd and https://t.co/bTaVxi4uro

[Zak Doric @zakdoric]

Bio agents are having a moment.

Come join us on May 26 for the inaugural #BOSTechWeek. We @a16z are hosting alongside @EliLillyandCo and @MassBio

We’ll have live demos from some of the coolest bio agents in drug discovery right now: Biomni from @phylo_bio, presented by @KexinHuang5, and Indy from @inductive_bio, presented by Alex Taylor. We’ll also hear from Ben Swanson at Skeletalis Bio, an osteoporosis therapeutics company and Lilly TuneLab partner.

Should be a fun one. @Techweek_

https://t.co/nRWiCoQACZ

[Vineeta Agarwala @vintweeta]

This is an outstanding AI product that every curious scientist and biomedical researcher should try out

Biomni Lab is available for free: https://t.co/xlwrbMgUtB

What I love most about Biomni Lab is that it leverages LLMs trained on public data (eg Claude) but also creates a (secure) environment for local reinforcement learning, in which your AI agents can get smarter as they learn from the results of *your* own most recent experiments, your study conditions, the private datasets you upload, etc. Tools, algos, and methods specific to biomed research (eg say a new algo for gRNA design) are fully integrated — and can keep getting better — within the environment too.

Basically what every science lab should *wish* they had...

Congrats to the truly cracked team of @KexinHuang5 @YuanhaoQ @jure and @lecong! I've known some of this team since our lab days together at @broadinstitute and can personally confirm that they (and I'm sure their army of AI agents 🤖) are a team that won’t rest until they’ve made their mark on the process of science

Go @phylo_bio! And thanks to my partners @JorgeCondeBio @zakdoric for bringing @a16z into this exciting effort.

[a16z @a16z]

Biology today is fragmented across PDFs, spreadsheets, and databases. Humans stitch results together manually, often irreproducibly.

Designers got Figma. Analysts got Excel. Software engineers got IDEs. It’s time biologists get tools that reflect the way science actually works.

@phylo_bio is building the first “Integrated Biology Environment” (IBE) – a single place where hypotheses are generated, experiments are planned, data is analyzed, models are run, and results are produced in a way that’s auditable and reproducible.

Phylo’s cofounders Kexin Huang and Yuanhao Qu are the team for this problem: Kexin has spent close to a decade pursuing an “AI scientist” since before the category was defined, and Yuanhao has deep domain expertise in experimental and computational biology.

Together they built Biomni – a popular open-source biomedical research agent that became the first concrete step toward Phylo’s IBE platform. Today they’re releasing Biomni Lab, an enterprise-grade environment built on the foundation of Biomni ready for production scientific use.

We’re proud to co-lead Phylo’s $13.5M seed round and partner with a team uniquely suited to build a native environment for scientific discovery – an AI scientist built by and for scientists.

By @JorgeCondeBio and @zakdoric

@KexinHuang5 @YuanhaoQ

[Kexin Huang @KexinHuang5]

We’re thrilled to have a16z co-lead our round. It’s been a pleasure (and a lot of fun) working with @JorgeCondeBio, @zakdoric, and the rest of the team. Excited to join the a16z fam!

[Zak Doric @zakdoric]

@KexinHuang5 @JorgeCondeBio We’re honored to be partnering with you and the Phylo team. Excited to see Phylo and Biomni Lab become a core part of how scientists do their work!

[Zak Doric @zakdoric]

@a16z @phylo_bio - Why we invested: https://t.co/GY76uB3b5e
- @endpts exclusive by @AndrewE_Dunn: https://t.co/kiJW8QnALW
- Careers page: https://t.co/3yN2dw1rwB
- SSF launch event: https://t.co/H42xkYcSet

[Zak Doric @zakdoric]

Designers have Figma. Analysts have Excel. Engineers have IDEs.
Biology never got its equivalent.

That’s why we @a16z are proud to co-lead @phylo_bio’s $13.5M seed round to build a native environment for scientific discovery — an AI scientist built by and for scientists.

For years, leaders at the frontier AI labs have said AI’s biggest impact will be in science. We agree. But the scientific method doesn’t fit cleanly into a chat window.

Phylo is building the Integrated Biology Environment (IBE) — an agentic orchestration layer that coordinates tools, data, and models across the scientific workflow, with the scientist firmly in control.

As PhD students at Stanford, Phylo co-founders @KexinHuang5 and @YuanhaoQ built @ProjectBiomni, an open-source biomedical research agent that spread organically across academia, hospitals, biotech, and pharma, and is now used in 7,000+ labs.

Today, they’re announcing Biomni Lab, a commercial-grade, enterprise-ready evolution of that foundation.

We believe Biomni Lab can become the default landing page for scientific work, the one tab that stays open on every scientist’s laptop.

@JorgeCondeBio
@daisydwolf
@jayrughani
Eva Steinman
@a16zBioHealth
Matt Kraning
@MenloVentures
@AnthropicAI

[Kexin Huang @KexinHuang5]

Today we’re launching Phylo, a research lab studying agentic biology, backed by a $13.5M seed round co-led by @a16z and @MenloVentures / Anthology Fund @AnthropicAI.

We’re also introducing a research preview of Biomni Lab, the first Integrated Biology Environment (IBE), where we’re imagining a new way biologists work.

Biomni Lab uses agents to orchestrate hundreds of biological databases, software tools, molecular AI models, expert workflows, and even external research services in one workspace, supporting research end-to-end from question to experiment to result.

Agents handle the mechanics, while you define the question, then review, steer, and decide. Scientists end up spending more time on science: asking questions, understanding mechanisms, and eliminating diseases.

Phylo (@phylo_bio) is a spin-out of @ProjectBiomni, where we will maintain the open-source community and push open-science research. I’m grateful to continue building with my co-founders @YuanhaoQ @jure @lecong and the dream founding team @serena2z @TianweiShe @huangzixin20151 @gm2123 @margaretwhua @malayhgandhi.

We’re also fortunate to be advised by leading scientists @zhangf, Carolyn Bertozzi, and @fabian_theis, and supported by an amazing group of investors including @JorgeCondeBio @zakdoric Matt Kraning @ZettaVentures @dreidco @conviction @saranormous @svangel @valkyrie_vc and others.

Biomni Lab is available for free today: https://t.co/zYcXEjvIbb
Learn more in our launch post: https://t.co/O09cnwYeNg

We are also hosting launch events - join us at
South San Francisco: https://t.co/4Xm9DFf4cY
Virtual: https://t.co/Wf7ksnWkRy

We’re also hiring! https://t.co/PABaLLwmRx

[Zak Doric @zakdoric]

Best way to kick off #JPM26

[Jorge Conde @JorgeCondeBio]

Thank you @GabriCorso + @jeremyWohlwend for joining us on the @a16z podcast to talk all things @boltz_bio, AI frontiers + infrastructure, and the importance of open science!
cc: @zakdoric

[Zak Doric @zakdoric]

Really enjoyed our conversation with the @boltz_bio team on the @a16z podcast, especially their perspective on the value of open science, and what it means to build products in the age of AI.

Links below for those curious 👇
cc @JorgeCondeBio

[Gabriele Corso @GabriCorso]

It was fun chatting with Jorge and Zak from Andreessen Horowitz about Boltz, our origin, mission, and the recent launch:
- Spotify: https://t.co/ogY0JcawAV
- Apple: https://t.co/D7YOCaXeUX
- YouTube: https://t.co/ghPymEwjlR

[Jorge Conde @JorgeCondeBio]

Announcing our newest @a16zBioHealth fund: $700M to back the best founders working to make better medicines and to make the practice of medicine better.

To cure disease, to care for our sick, to fix what’s broken is deeply ingrained; it is medicine’s highest aim.

“At @a16z, we believe that the best thing that a society can do for a person is to give them a chance. Give them a shot at a great life…” - @bhorowitz

@vintweeta @julesyoo @BenPortney @Bryan__Faust @zakdoric @JayRughani @daisydwolf @janerheetweets Michael Cialone, Eva Steinman