ABSCI

Sean McClain founded Absci in 2011 with a focus on synthetic biology — engineering microbes to produce protein-based drugs more efficiently. Over nearly a decade, the approach evolved dramatically.

By 2020, the company had layered sophisticated generative AI onto its biology platform, shifting the core thesis from production efficiency to drug creation itself. The bet became: instead of finding antibodies that bind disease targets from existing libraries, design entirely new ones that don't yet exist in nature.

Absci partners with pharmaceutical and biotech companies through its Integrated Drug Creation platform. Partners pay for drug design services — renting Absci's AI and cell biology infrastructure to generate novel drug candidates for their own therapeutic programs.

The company also builds an internal pipeline of drug candidates it owns and plans to develop or license independently.

Integrated Drug Creation platform, zero-shot generative antibody design (published in Nature, 2023), proprietary oncology and immunology pipeline programs

Land major pharma partners to fund operations and validate the platform technology. Use published scientific results — including the 2023 Nature paper on zero-shot antibody design — as proof that the AI is producing genuinely novel, functional molecules.

Scale the partner business while building proprietary assets that create long-term upside.

Translating AI-designed molecules into clinical success. The path from a Nature paper showing an AI-generated antibody binds a target to a drug that cures patients in Phase 3 is measured in years and hundreds of millions of dollars.

The public market got impatient, the stock fell well below IPO price, and the pressure for a major validation deal has intensified.

General Atlantic, Leaps by Bayer (Bayer's venture arm), Casdin Capital, Gates Frontier, public market investors