Chai Discovery, backed by Pfizer and Eli Lilly, is raising $400M at $3.4B. Its AI achieves 20% hit rates on antibody design, 200x better than prior methods. The read-through for blockchain-based drug discovery.
Chai Discovery, an AI drug discovery startup founded in 2024, is in talks to raise $400 million at a $3.4 billion valuation. The round would nearly triple the company's valuation from its $130 million Series B in December 2025.
The company's investors include OpenAI, Thrive Capital, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, and Oak HC/FT on the technology side. Pfizer and Eli Lilly represent the pharmaceutical side. Former Pfizer Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten joined Chai Discovery's board.
Chai Discovery's flagship model, Chai-2, designs novel antibodies from scratch. The company says its hit rate is about 20%, compared with roughly 0.1% for prior computational methods. That makes the AI roughly 200 times more effective at finding viable drug candidates.
The round stands out for what it does not include: any token or DAO. The company's capital comes from traditional venture capital and corporate partnerships. That puts it in a different category from decentralized science projects, or DeSci, which rely on blockchain-based fundraising and governance.
Chai Discovery raised $30 million in seed funding in 2024 and a $70 million Series A in August 2025. The $130 million Series B in December 2025 valued the company at $1.3 billion. The current $400 million round would push that to $3.4 billion.
The scale of the round dwarfs the treasury of VitaDAO, a prominent DeSci project. Institutional capital allocators are placing their bets on AI and traditional equity structures, not blockchain alternatives.
Eli Lilly (LLY), one of the pharma backers, carries an Alpha Score of 69/100, a Moderate rating in the Healthcare sector.
Chai Discovery's 20% hit rate still needs to hold up in clinical trials. The company has already attracted hundreds of millions from the biggest names in tech and pharma. DeSci projects continue to operate on a fraction of that scale.
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