In the 20th century, drugs were discovered by a mix of brute force and serendipity.
In the age of AI, this will be replaced by computation.
With this as context, we’re proud to back Manas AI, a company founded by oncologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Siddhartha Mukherjee, and our friend and longtime co-investor Reid Hoffman. They are on a mission to compress the timeline for discovering life-saving drugs from years to months.
We are participating in their $24.6M seed round alongside General Catalyst (who led the round) and a group of angels.
It takes over a decade and billions of dollars to bring a new drug to market. The vast majority of candidates never make it. For pharmaceutical companies, this implies enormously inefficient allocation of time and capital. For patients with aggressive diseases, especially cancer, the current state of affairs is often fatal.
This isn’t simply because we lack ideas; it’s because the tools and techniques to explore them are slow and expensive to scale. Manas AI brings together leading minds across AI, chemistry, biology, and clinical research – an interdisciplinary team uniquely equipped to redefine how new medicines are discovered.
Manas is reimagining the entire drug discovery process – from how we choose what to target, to how we design and test potential treatments. The company is building a full-stack platform that can generate new drug candidates, simulate how they might work in the body, and test the most promising ones in days or weeks, not years. They are starting with aggressive cancers and expanding to other therapeutic areas.
The team is a rare pairing. Siddhartha Mukherjee is one of the most respected voices in modern medicine: a physician-scientist with deep experience in cancer research and drug development. He brings the insight and network needed to build a leading biotech company from day one. Reid Hoffman brings world-class experience in building platforms, scaling companies, and backing transformational technologies.
Together, they are assembling an experienced team that blends scientific depth with technical ambition, and have secured key partners including Microsoft to help move fast.
At Mosaic, we look for companies that leverage AI to redefine big industries. Manas is doing just that for drug discovery.
They’re not offering software to life sciences and pharmaceutical companies – but instead are upending the way the industry works.
We’re excited by the team, impressed by the speed of early execution, and convinced that the combination of AI, biology, and engineering will be one of the defining shifts in healthcare over the next decades. We’re thrilled to be early partners on the journey.
