Kevin Weil, the former chief product officer of OpenAI, has sought a valuation of at least $750 million for a new AI science startup, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions.
Weil is aiming to raise $150 million in the round, according to these sources. The details have not been finalized yet and could still change.
Weil did not respond to a request for comment.
Weil’s fundraising is the latest sign that AI’s next frontier is shifting from chatbots to science. A growing number of OpenAI and Google alums are launching startups that promise to accelerate scientific discovery, from designing new drugs to running autonomous experiments.
Weil departed OpenAI earlier this year, where he was chief product officer and then oversaw science initiatives. He oversaw Prism, a workspace designed to bring frontier models directly into scientists’ workflows.
Prior to OpenAI, Weil was a product executive at Meta and Twitter. He holds various board seats, including on the boards of Cisco and Stoke Space.
The exact details of his new startup could not be learned, but sources say he has pitched it as a way to gather scientific data for AI models.
Weil is far from the only senior OpenAI leader to head for the exits. Brad Lightcap, the company’s longtime former chief operating officer, announced that he was leaving after eight years to start “something new.” Fidji Simo stepped down as CEO of applications in July, citing health reasons, and moved into a part-time advisory role. In April, Weil’s departure coincided with the exits of Sora’s head, Bill Peebles, and Srinivas Narayanan, OpenAI’s CTO for business applications.
Weil’s new AI-for-science startup enters an increasingly competitive race to use artificial intelligence to automate the scientific process.
Periodic Labs, founded by former OpenAI researcher Liam Fedus and former Google DeepMind researcher Ekin Dogus Cubuk, is building AI scientists alongside autonomous laboratories where robots can conduct physical experiments and generate new training data. Investors in that company include Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Jeff Bezos, and Eric Schmidt.
Last week, Jeff Dean, Google’s chief scientist, announced that he and three other colleagues were leaving to start Discovery Loop, an AI startup focused on AI applications in science and engineering.
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