Kevin Weil raises $215M to build robotic drug discovery labs in America and reshore pharma R&D from China

Speaker 1: first, let me tell you about Console. Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets. We have Kevin Williams, the founder of Warp Sciences... Launching Warp Sciences. Get that going, Greg. Kevin, how are you doing? Hey, guys. Welcome back. See you again. Good to see you again. It's been far too long. Everyone's been too long. Congratulations.

Speaker 2: We've been busy. Yeah. Yeah. Seems like it. Cooking.

Speaker 1: Huge acceleration. Talk about the the vision, the mission of the company, what you're building, and introduce the company to us.

Speaker 7: Yeah. I'd love to. So Warped uses AI and robotics to help the world discover new medicines faster. Okay. Right? We're building robotic labs to do science at scale, and we're doing it here in America. There are two big things that we believe. Yeah. The first is that robotics robotics and robotic labs are gonna accelerate science. Mhmm. Probably because you can just run more experiments when you have labs operating twenty four seven, but also because these kind of labs can generate data at huge scale to train amazing AI models for science. The second thing, we need to reshor scientific capabilities from China so that we don't lose our pharma industry the way that we did solar, drones, and manufacturing. Yep. And there's one solution to both of these things, which is we are building a next generation preclinical CRO, a contract research organization. We're doing it here in America. It means we don't develop drugs of our own. We're building the infrastructure for everybody else who does so that they can go faster. Yep.

Speaker 2: What's what's happening... Like, over the last year, I I I heard some number about how how much, like, US and and and sort of allied pharma companies and allied countries are are spending on, like Chinese licensing, Chinese, like pharmaceutical advancements. Like, what what more can you share on that front? Just how much of like the drugs coming down our pipelines were actually made outside of the country?

Speaker 7: I mean, almost all of them had had big parts of their programs that happened in China. It very much rhymes with what we did with the manufacturing industry where in the early days, it's like, it's like a bunch of sensible local decisions where you're like, oh, well, this is low skilled labor. It can happen more cheaply elsewhere, so we'll move it out. And then over time, it it becomes not just low skilled labor, but you know, there's innovation that happens and suddenly our muscles atrophy, theirs grow and all of a sudden we can't manufacture a lot of the things we need. There's this amazing quote from Andy Grove from like years ago when he was running Intel. He said abandoning today's commodity manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow's emerging industry. Yeah. It happened exactly in manufacturing and it is on the way to happening in pharma and we can't let it. So with with manufacturing,

Speaker 1: I remember the story of d... American deindustrialization as driven by two factors. One is what you said, lower labor costs abroad, but two is, it's dirty nimbyism. I don't want the smoky steel mill in my backyard. Let's put it halfway across the world where I don't have to see it or worry about it or think about the pollution. With CROs, is is nimbyism a factor whatsoever? I feel like no one would care, but how how how has that played into it, or has it been a nonfactor?

Speaker 7: I don't think that's a huge factor here. I think it's been much more of the first that you identified. It's it's the cost, and it's this feeling of, oh, well, maybe this won't be so strategic. And then, of course, it turns out that it's massively strategic. Yeah. We don't wanna lose the ability to turn ideas into medicines here in The United States. Yeah. So then, on the labor cost, it feels like by leaning into

Speaker 1: higher volume tests testing driven by robotics, you can be more competitive on the economic side. So I would imagine that within, I don't know what your timeline is, a year or two, like, on on a cost per experiment, you would be competitive internationally very quickly. Correct?

Speaker 7: Yeah, and so the, like, just to step back, because I bet a bunch of people don't know how these processes work. So let's say the three of us go start a biotech company. We're going to develop new medicines. We're going to try and cure a particular form of cancer. You usually start with some biological target, right? We might say it's usually a protein. So we might say, you know, maybe because of Jordy's grad school research, we've got, you you either want to like, you either to accelerate or inhibit some protein. Sure. And you've got that idea. You find a molecule that maybe sort of does it, but it probably is toxic or it's not soluble, so the body can't process it the right way or it's not potent. So instead of taking a tiny amount of it as a pill, you have to take a kilogram of it, which, you know, all of these things disqualify it as a drug. And so the next step in the process is we would go through three to five years of making variations of that molecule to try to optimize it, to make it more potent, to make it more soluble, to make it less toxic. So there's this like three to five year process and that entire process is outsourced to China. That's the problem. And that's what we're bringing back. And the only way you're going to bring it back to your point about economics is if you do it a different way. You've got to use AI and robotics and that's what we're doing.

Speaker 2: Talk about like how you see demand over the next couple years. I can imagine in the same way that we're seeing an explosion of new cybersecurity vulnerabilities, we might see an explosion of new pretty promising, even concepts or ideas for new drugs. Do you imagine you're gonna very quickly be, you know, even as you're expanding capacity, like turning away a lot of opportunities just because of how many opportunities there are?

Speaker 7: Yeah. I think this is the this is the exciting thing about where we are. It's... This is this is a a real existing industry. Billions of dollars are going right now overseas to these players to help develop every drug that, you know, that you ever see or take. And so there's already a big market for it. And every player would prefer to have that done in The US where they have, you know, strong IP guarantees and everything else. And to your point, you've got lots of exciting new players in AI. Every one of the frontier labs is getting involved, which I think is amazing. And you've got all kinds of new startups that are using AI to do bio. I think that's only going to accelerate. So there's a there's not just a big market today. There's a big and growing market going forward.

Speaker 2: On the robotics side, how much... What what is the opportunity to pull stuff off the shelf? I'm assuming there's like a ton of companies working specifically on that and you can sort of acquire existing existing robotic, tools. Or I imagine a big part of this will be building your own, but what do you think your your view is?

Speaker 7: Yeah. There'll be some of each. There there is a lot happening. I mean, this is one of the reasons why this is like the why now for this company is robotics is just at the beginning of the s curve that we've seen AI, you know, broadly go on. And so, like, the capabilities are increasing at an incredible rate. For us, we're going to be super pragmatic. If there's something that we can build that... Or that we can buy that helps us go faster, helps us automate more of the process, then for sure we'll do it. But I don't think that it's all out there ready to be bought. I think this is going to have to be a build from the ground up, which is why we are totally vertically integrated. We have chemists on the team. We have roboticists.

Speaker 1: We have mechanical engineers. We have AI researchers. And I think that's the only way that this company is gonna be successful. Can you talk about the shape of that s curve? My my intuition is that we we saw sort of a fast takeoff in software vulnerabilities because you can run PHP in a virtual machine, and you can hammer it with a ton of different exploits that you're inferencing pretty quickly, inferences pretty fast, and everything can be done in this closed loop that happens so, so quickly. And right now in bio, maybe it's a a week to run an experiment, get it back. Maybe you bring that down to a day, maybe an hour. But even if there's a few minutes of timeline, you're you're looking at an order of magnitude slower than software. So I would assume a little bit slower of a takeoff, but am I wrong about my intuition there?

Speaker 7: I think this is exactly why it... Even as we're seeing AI completely remake software engineering Yeah. And you're seeing AI do things like solve Navier Stokes Yeah. And make progress on the Riemann hypothesis Yeah. We haven't seen the same level of of sort of mastery in the physical sciences, in chemistry and biology and material science. Yeah. It's exactly the reason that you say. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons that it's so important that we develop robotic labs, right? It's it's both we need to reshore this from China. Yeah. And this is the way that you generate data at scale that will allow us to build the next generation of incredible scientific AI models. Right? And because there's nothing... There's... I can't think of very many things more important than seeing that kind of acceleration that we've seen in software and math. Yeah. But in biology, in chemistry, and drug discovery instead. And it might be multiplicative.

Speaker 1: Like, if you shorten the time for the loop and then you're applying the models faster, you you actually get, an exponential there that that that you see results very quickly.

Speaker 7: Exactly. I mean, the the the thing that's gonna come when AI is able to develop and to design more drugs is then we're gonna need to test way more drugs. That will, I think, invariably require a physical component. Yeah. But that physical component also generates really valuable data. So there's absolutely a loop here.

Speaker 1: Did you how did you... Did did you ever explore the idea of what Ravi Gupta's doing where he acquired a business? Like, you're able to raise a lot of money. You have a storied career in Silicon Valley. Is there... Did you ever go down the path of, like, maybe we should buy a CRO that already exists or buy some company and and and turn it around or expand it in some way versus build everything from scratch? Did you do the build versus buy analysis before embarking on this journey?

Speaker 7: Yeah. It's a really good question, and and we did. We talked about it. Yeah. I just think it's it's it's very tough to sort of remake and re outfit a business that has worked a particular way for decades. Sure. Like I said, I think this is a very... Most CROs aren't hiring AI researchers and roboticists. Yeah. So I I I think you just need to build from scratch with the idea that you're looking to automate this from day one and that you're trying to find these different... These loops and scaling laws in the process to get there. Well, I wanna hit the gong. How much did you raise?

Speaker 1: Tell us about the fundraise.

Speaker 7: We raised... Oh, wait. Go for it. We raised 215,000,000.

Speaker 1: You're

Speaker 7: usually on for for product releases and stuff. That might be your first Gong hit on the show. Yeah. I was gonna say, I think it's my third or fourth time on the show because it's my first Gong. Yes. Yeah. We raised we raised 215,000,000. Yeah. Lightspeed led. Amazing. We had folks like IVP, Mayfield, Lux, Menlo Ventures, Scribble Ventures, a bunch of amazing folks. Then a bunch of angels that I have worked with and worked alongside, VG Simo, Brian Armstrong, Mark Chen, Alex Gorski, Sarah Fryer. So it's just We get it. We feel really lucky.

Speaker 2: We get it. That was good. Lot of demand in Silicon Valley. Well, now we gotta go build, Now the important part. Of course, of course. But we're glad to I'm get the mic to do so happy you're doing this. It's really, really important work and I can imagine your phone's gonna be ringing off the hook. This feels like squarely... This just feels like the need right now, as so much of the industry is now focused on, hey, how do we apply this technology in a way that hopefully we'll get a better response from people short AI videos and things like that.

Speaker 7: For sure. Well, I mean, the response today has been awesome, but now we got to put our heads down and go build. And I hope we get to come back and talk more when we do.

Speaker 1: Can't wait. Congratulations. Congrats to the whole team. Awesome launch. Thank you, guys. Great to see you, Hawke. Today. Goodbye. Let me tell you about Public. Invest across all asset classes. Automate anything with AI agents. Run trading strategies, risk management, money movements, and monitor markets with AI agents for investing on Public. Our next guest is joining in just a minute. But we have some big news. The iPhone Duo will allow you to scroll reels and TikTok concurrently.

Speaker 2: It was long speculating. I was thinking do this. Look. When I started seeing some of the images come out, I thought I was... I thought it was Duo on arrival. Mhmm. But

Speaker 1: seeing this, I think there's a Sauger and Jetty ordered one. Just for this feature. Right? No. Oh, yeah. It's brainwashed. No. His his thesis was that he will actually be less addicted to scrolling content because it's more inconvenient to actually open it up and that you will use it. It'll have some dumb phone like features, and then when you open it up... I don't know. What do you think? Do think this No. It doesn't make any sense because there's still a screen on the so you can use it while not opening it. But it's a smaller screen, and it's a less convenient screen. So you'll be like, I don't really... Yeah. Why is it less convenient? Oh, because it's smaller and it's, like, more square. It's not as, like, easy to just have in your hand like a phone. That's what I I don't know. Daniel Storm has a callback. Texting is really nice on the duo. Do either of you get this reference? So this is this is texting in an Excel sheet. This is from a music video from, like, the nineties when Oh, no. Maybe two thousands when there... I I I actually don't know the full reference, but this is from... I think it's a Nelly video where someone... If you scroll down, you can see someone texting on a Nokia. Keep going. Keep going. You'll see the phone. Keep going. Ball knowledge elite. There. That's one. This is a screenshot from a music video, I believe, a Nelly video, where the the the female character in the music video is supposed to be texting where you at, holla when you get this, but is just in a spreadsheet. Because the the crew was like, we need to show her texting, and they chose an Excel spreadsheet, which is kind of a crazy feature for this Nokia phone back then. Who knew that you could be doing DCFs on a on a new phone? Pretty crazy advanced technology.