Kevin Weil's Warp Sciences Raises $215M to Build AI-Run Robotic Chemistry Labs in the U.S.

Warp Sciences, a new company led by former OpenAI chief product officer Kevin Weil, has raised $215 million to build chemistry labs run increasingly by AI models and robots. The San Francisco startup came out of stealth on October 22 with a round led by Lightspeed. Its plan is to make and test the molecules drug companies need, record every experiment in a form a model can learn from, and use that data to train better AI for chemistry.

“AI has dramatically accelerated software engineering and mathematics, but it has yet to make the same impact in the physical sciences,” Weil said in the company’s announcement. “If we want to build more capable AI for science, we need to generate real-world data at scale.”

A lab that trains its own models

Warp’s argument is that AI for chemistry is limited by data. Lightspeed’s investment post lays it out. Lab data mostly stays inside the companies that produce it, it is stored in inconsistent formats, and published results lean toward successes because failed reactions rarely get written up. Yet failures are some of the most useful training data a model can get.

Warp’s answer is to run the experiments itself. According to Lightspeed, Warp records every step of every run, including the ones that fail, along with robotics and process-engineering data. It uses that data to find slow or unreliable steps in its own lab and to train models that predict how to make a compound and which compounds are worth making. Because its own robots run the work, it keeps the failed results that other labs rarely capture.

At first, experienced chemists will do much of the work, with AI tools helping them plan syntheses and pick the next experiment. Over time, robots will take over repetitive, high-volume steps such as setting up reactions and purifying samples. Later, Warp plans to sell predictions as well as compounds.

“Every experiment should make the next one smarter,” said Mano Paluri, Warp’s co-founder and chief technology officer.

Starting with lead optimization

Warp’s first service is lead optimization analog synthesis: making variations of a promising molecule so researchers can compare them while hunting for a drug candidate. Lightspeed says good contract labs aim to finish each design-make-test round in two to three weeks, and a full program usually takes two to four years.

Warp is a contract research organization, not a drug developer. “We’re not developing drugs of our own. We’re building the infrastructure for the people who do,” said DJ Patil, co-founder and chief operating officer. Customers choose which molecules to pursue and keep control of their programs.

Bringing the work onshore

The other half of the pitch is location. According to Lightspeed, much of Western pharma’s outsourced chemistry is done offshore, largely in China. Warp’s release points to the BIOSECURE Act, signed into law in December 2025, which set up restrictions on federal procurement and funding involving designated biotechnology “companies of concern.” Lightspeed adds that pharma leaders have asked for a domestic option and that no U.S. provider is currently built for this work at that scale.

Sol Reisberg, co-founder and chief scientific officer, has bought from offshore labs himself. He said Warp wants to offer the same calibre of chemistry in the U.S., “with IP protection at the center of the relationship, and without the price premium that U.S. boutique CROs currently demand.”

A team from AI labs and medicinal chemistry

Weil was chief product officer at OpenAI and later started and led OpenAI for Science. Paluri helped found Meta’s FAIR research lab, led work on Llama models and was most recently a vice president at Meta Superintelligence Labs; at Warp he leads model and robotics work. Patil was the first U.S. chief data scientist. Reisberg has led medicinal chemistry for about 20 years and co-founded Terremoto Biosciences. Early hires bring robotics experience from Genesis, Skild AI and 1X, and scientists from Genentech and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Who is backing it

Lightspeed led the round, which it describes as a Series A. Premji Invest, Mayfield, IVP, Lux, Conviction, Menlo Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Innovation Endeavors and SignalFire are among the other participants. Angel investors include Anthropic Labs co-lead Mike Krieger, Databricks co-founder Ion Stoica, Figma CEO Dylan Field and Skild AI CEO Deepak Pathak. Warp is hiring roboticists, AI researchers and chemists.