Scientific 'superintelligence' firm Lila launches with $200m

The latest biotech to emerge from the Flagship Pioneering incubator – Lila Sciences – has emerged with $200 million in seed financing to advance its vision of artificial intelligence-powered, fully autonomous labs for the life sciences and other industries.

The goal is to combine AI, automation, and robotics to create 'self-driving' labs that run experiments, collect and analyse data, and make recommendations on the next stage in the experimental process – effectively pursuing the scientific method at scale.

Lila has been gestating for three years at Flagship, working on what it describes as a "scientific superintelligence platform" that goes beyond the current limitations of AI – drawing on already available data – and introduces a spark of creativity by allowing it "to experiment, to play, and to learn."

Among the achievements claimed by the startup in that period include the development of large-language models (LLMs) for scientific reasoning, the generation of genetic medicine constructs that outperform commercially available therapeutics, and the discovery and validation of hundreds of novel antibodies, peptides, and binders.

Lila is led by Flagship general partner Geoffrey von Maltzahn and its R&D team includes two prominent Harvard University researchers, namely geneticist George Church, who takes the role of chief scientist, and machine learning specialist Andrew Beam who has been named chief technology officer.

"Lila's mission…is born out of the belief that this is the most important opportunity of our time, and that the leader in this pursuit will be the entity that runs the scientific method at the largest scale, speed and intelligence," said von Maltzahn.

"To achieve this, we must solve the hard problems to allow AI to autonomously and in a scalable manner run each step – from AI models generating an idea to reducing it to practice with robotics and automation."

Lila is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts – a stone's throw away from Harvard and MIT – in offices overlooking the Charles River.

The seed financing has been provided by Flagship – which closed a massive $3.6 billion biotech fund with a focus on AI last year – alongside General Catalyst, March Capital, ARK Venture Fund, Altitude Life Science Ventures, Blue Horizon Advisors, State of Michigan Retirement System, Modi Ventures, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA).

"For all of human history, the method for scientific exploration has been steadfast: we predict, test, learn, create. Yet for all the progress we have made, we still understand only a fraction of the rules that govern the physical world," said Noubar Afeyan, founder and CEO of Flagship, who is a Lila co-founder and will also serve as its chairman.

"With Lila, our hypothesis is that by scaling experimentation, we can unlock emergent abilities and enable discoveries that remain hidden at smaller scales," he added. "Lila represents an ambitious undertaking that we believe will accelerate science with enormous benefit to society."