00:51:44 · Kevin Weil, Jordi Hays
[00:51:44] S6: 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. [00:52:19] S1: 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?
00:52:19 · Jordi Hays, Kevin Weil
[00:52:19] S1: 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? [00:52:48] S6: 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. [00:53:34] S1: 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?
00:53:34 · Jordi Hays, Kevin Weil
[00:53:34] S1: 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? [00:53:56] S6: 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. We have mechanical engineers. We have AI researchers. And I think that's the only way that this company is gonna be successful.
00:54:39 · John Coogan, Kevin Weil
[00:54:39] S0: 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? [00:55:24] S6: I think this is exactly why it... Even as we're seeing AI completely remake software engineering [00:55:31] S0: Yeah. [00:55:31] S6: 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. [00:55:56] S0: Yeah.
00:55:56 · John Coogan, Kevin Weil
[00:55:56] S0: Yeah. [00:55:56] S6: 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. [00:56:16] S0: And it might be multiplicative. 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. [00:56:27] S6: 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. [00:56:44] S0: 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?
00:56:44 · John Coogan, Kevin Weil, Jordi Hays
[00:56:44] S0: 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? [00:57:15] S6: 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. [00:57:27] S0: Sure. [00:57:27] S6: Like I said, I think this is a very... Most CROs aren't hiring AI researchers and roboticists. [00:57:33] S0: Yeah. [00:57:33] S6: 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. [00:57:44] S0: Well, I wanna hit the gong. How much did you raise? Tell us about the fundraise. [00:57:49] S6: We raised... Oh, wait. Go for it. We raised 215,000,000. [00:57:54] S0: You're usually on for for product releases and stuff. That might be your first Gong hit on the show. [00:58:00] S6: Yeah. I was gonna say, I think it's my third or fourth time on the show because it's my first Gong. [00:58:04] S1: Yes. Yeah.