OpenAI's former science chief raised $215 million to bring drug-research chemistry back from China, with robots

Warp Sciences came out of stealth on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026, with $215 million led by Lightspeed Venture Partners to build U.S.-based chemistry services for drug research, combining human chemists, AI and lab robotics, with former OpenAI executive Kevin Weil as CEO.

Drug discovery has a dirty secret: a lot of the actual molecule-making happens in big contract labs in China, because it is cheap, fast and boring. Warp's bet is that robots trained by watching real chemists can make U.S. chemistry cost-competitive, just as Washington starts squeezing the China supply chain. It's a very Silicon Valley lineup, a product guy from OpenAI, an AI lab founder from Meta and the first U.S. chief data scientist, taking on a job that is mostly about how well you run a fume hood. An $865 million valuation before the first big contract is a lot of faith in that. If it works, though, lab robotics stops being a demo and becomes a supply chain.

Warp Sciences is a U.S. chemistry contract research organization, a CRO. A CRO is a lab that drug developers hire when they want someone else to make and test molecules. Warp says it will not develop its own drugs. It starts with lead optimization, the slow cycle of making many analogs of a promising compound. An analog is a close chemical cousin of that compound. The company says it will combine expert chemists, artificial intelligence, and lab robotics. Those lines are Warp's, from its Oct. 22 announcement.

The co-founders are Kevin Weil, the chief executive, who was OpenAI's chief product officer and then led OpenAI for Science, the company's science group; Sol Reisberg, the chief science officer, who previously worked at Terremoto Biosciences, where he spent years buying this kind of chemistry from labs overseas; Mano Paluri, the chief technology officer, who helped found Meta's FAIR lab, its long-running AI research group, spent 14 years at Meta, most recently as a vice president at Meta Superintelligence Labs, and worked on Llama, Meta's open models; and DJ Patil, the chief operating officer, who was the first U.S. Chief Data Scientist and later worked at Devoted Health. The company site lists Paluri as Manohar Paluri. Those roles are in the launch materials and in Lightspeed's investor post.

The round is $215 million, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Lightspeed calls it a Series A. Also in: Premji Invest, Mayfield, IVP, Lux Capital, Conviction, Menlo Ventures, and others. Angel investors include Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong, Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, Figma's Dylan Field, and OpenAI's Mark Chen and Sarah Friar. Bloomberg and TechCrunch report an $865 million post-money valuation, the company's value once the new money is counted. TechCrunch says Weil announced that figure on X. The valuation is their report. It is not a revenue number, and Warp has not disclosed revenue.

TechCrunch describes the training method. Chemists wear cameras and gloves fitted with sensors while they work, so their technique can train the robots. The robots are supposed to take on repetitive synthesis, the repeated making of those analog molecules. People keep the judgment calls. That account does not say the robots replace the chemists.

A lot of this outsourced chemistry is done in China. Reuters reported that a 2024 survey by BIO, the biotechnology industry group, found that 74% of the biotech companies that responded had at least one contract with a China-based contract manufacturer or contract research lab. The BIOSECURE Act, signed in December 2025, restricts some federally funded work with certain Chinese biotech firms. That law is the policy backdrop for a pitch that the same work can be done in the United States. The 74% figure is Reuters's, from the BIO survey. It is not a count of Warp's customers.

Warp has not disclosed a customer, a revenue figure, or a facility that is already running, and it has not named where the lab is. Weil announced the launch on X. The company is hiring roboticists, AI researchers, and chemists. The openings are on its careers page.

The picture is Lightspeed's, published with its Oct. 22 post: co-founders Kevin Weil, Sol Reisberg, and DJ Patil, left to right, standing in a courtyard.

In plain terms, Warp came out of stealth on Thursday with $215 million to be a U.S. lab-for-hire for the slow chemistry of improving a drug candidate. Chemists are supposed to teach robots the repetitive steps, and people keep the hard calls. Bloomberg and TechCrunch put the value at $865 million after the new money. The company has not named a customer or a lab address.